Branch milestones

1825 – first commercial shale gas bore in Fredonia, New York (USA). The extracted gas was used to power a small town. It happened 20 years before the first oil bore in the USA.

1860 – a simulation of deep oil bores was conducted in Pennsylvania using nitroglycerin which was a prelude for developing the fracturing method

1860-1920 – natural gas production from shallow reserves in Illinois and the Appalachian mountains basins

  

1929 – first attempts of counter bores which can be considered as first horizontal bores

the 1940s – first attempts at hydraulic fracturing of oil reserves in Grant county, Kansas

1949 – Halliburton conducts first attempts at fracturing using napalm and sand in Texas and Oklahoma

the 1950s – first attempts at fracturing in Poland

1973 – PGNiG Nafta Piła conducts the first directional bore in Poland

1976 – Morgantown Energy Research Center (MERC) spearheaded the formation of the Federal Eastern Gas Shales Project research facility 

1977 – MERC sets in motion the program for methane extraction from CBM

1977 – the Polish Patent Office No. 24 (104) published the patent by the specialists in the Oil and Gas Institute in Cracow for preparing the rocks for fracturing, specifically the rocks in the bore hole

1980 – using the fracturing technology on the Antrim reserve on a broader scale

1986 – joint venture of the Energy Department and private partnerships demonstrated the first multiple crack bore of the shale gas

1991 – Mitchell Energy ended its first horizontal bore in the Texas Barnett Shale. This project  received subsidies from the Gas Research Institute

1996 – production of the shale gas from the US reserves ranges up to 0.3 billion cubic feet (8.5 milliard cubic metres)

1998 - Mitchell Energy drills the first commercially successful shale gas bore using the “slick water"” horizontal drill with fracturing

2001 – granting first shale gas exploration concessions from unconventional reserves 

2005 – 14990 shale gas bores operate in the United States

2006 – USA production increases threefold since 1996 to 1.1 billion cubic feet (31 milliard cubic metres) which is 5.9 percent of the total American gas production

2008 – 36 thousand new jobs are created in the state of New York and the income from the shale branch is estimated at 8 milliard USD

2009 – the economy of West Virginia gains 1.3 milliard USD due to the shale boom

2010 – the first fracturing operation conducted by PGNiG in the Markowola-1 tight gas reserve

2011 - Marcellus Shale Coalition predicted creating 88 thousand new jobs due to the progress in mining operations