HOUSTON (AP) — George P. Mitchell leveraged a penchant for hard work, an appetite for risk and dogged persistence in the face of futility into a technological breakthrough that reshaped the global energy industry and made the wildcat oilman a billionaire.
Mitchell, the developer and philanthropist who also is considered the father of fracking, doggedly pursued natural gas he and others knew were trapped in wide, thin layers of rock deep underground. Fracking brought an entirely new — and enormous — trove of oil and gas within reach.
Mitchell died Friday at age 94 his home in Galveston, his family said.
The son of a Greek immigrant who ran a cleaning and shoeshine business in Galveston, Mitchell became one of the wealthiest men in the U.S. While his technological breakthrough transformed economies in states like North Dakota, Texas and Pennsylvania and is expected to migrate around the world, many environmentalists have attacked the practice over concerns about air and water pollution.
