GE to invest billions to improve fracking

US-based multinational conglomerate GE is planning to invest billions of dollars to improve fracking.

Fracking is a technique in which a large amount of water is mixed with sand and chemicals, and injected at high pressure into faults to release petroleum and natural gas such as shale gas, tight gas, and coal seam gas.

The technique has generated lot of controversy in oil and gas states such as Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Colorado due to related environmental and health hazards.

The company said it will open a new laboratory in Oklahoma, US, and buy related science companies in the hopes that cutting-edge technology reduces the environmental and health effects of fracking, as well as improving its efficiency.

GE, which doesn’t drill any wells or produce oil or gas, expects the complexities and techniques involved with the fracking boom to play to its strengths as a company.

Oil and gas companies drill wells horizontally at great depths in a variety of formations across the US, and that means each location often requires different techniques.

GE senior vice president Mark Little said that in recent years, the company has invested around $15bn in the oil and gas sector.

"We like the oil and gas base because we see the need for resources for a long time to come," Little added.

The company said that it has devices that can be put down into a well to provide information about what is happening a mile or two below ground to people on the surface.

"We’ll get more information than ever before," Little said.

Founder of The Breakthrough Institute in Oakland Michael Shellenberger said that GE’s decision is a positive response to rightful public concerns about the environmental impacts of fracking.

"It’s the kind of continuous improvement of technologies that’s needed," Shellenberger added.

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Image: GE plans to invest billions of dollars in fracking. Photo: Courtesy of Eric Kounce TexasRaiser.