From his home office in North Texas, Nick Steinsberger monitors his drilling operation.
He owns Valpoint Operating, an oil and gas company with a drilling rig in Oklahoma.
The area is so remote, you can’t even see any houses.
“There’s nobody to come and complain out here,” he said. “The county seat is Arnett, which is about 20 miles away and the population is probably a thousand people.”
It’s not his top priority, but staying out of residential communities makes running his business easier.
Steinsberger and his team are fracking for oil, using the same techniques that Nick revolutionized, while pumping natural gas out of North Texas.
In the mid-90’s, Steinsberger was a completion manager assigned to the Barnett Shale. And looking to cut costs, he tried something different.
“I greatly reduced the amount of gels and the chemicals that we were pumping,” he said.
Instead, he used mostly water.
“I wasn’t laughed at,” he added with a smile.
But his colleagues didn’t hold their breath.
“The analogy is, as a kid, you play with clay,” he explained. “We put a lot of water in the clay and it turns into a mucky gush. How are you going to get oil and gas out of that mucky gush?”