The relationship between well performance and treatment pressures was studied by Floyd Farris of Stanolind Oil and Gas Corporation . This study became a basis of the first hydraulic fracturing experiment , which was conducted in 1947 at the Hugoton gas field in Grant County of southwestern Kansas by Stanolind . For the well treatment of gelled gasoline and sand from the Arkansas River was injected into the gas-producing limestone formation at . The experiment was not very successful as deliverability of the well did not change appreciably . The process was further described by J.B. Clark of Stanolind in his paper published in 1948 . A patent on this process was issued in 1949 and an exclusive license was granted to the Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Company . On March 17 , 1949 , Halliburton performed the first two commercial hydraulic fracturing treatments in Stephens County , Oklahoma , and Archer County , Texas . The practice caught on quickly , and in June 1950 , '' Newsweek '' reported that 300 oil wells had been treated with the new technique . In 1965 , a US Bureau of Mines publication wrote of hydraulic fracturing : " Many fields are in existence today because of these fracturing techniques for , without them , many producing horizons would have been bypassed in the past 15 years as either barren or commercially nonproductive . " In the 1960s , American geologists became increasingly aware of huge volumes of gas-saturated rocks with permeability too low ( generally less than 0.1 millidarcy ) to recover the gas economically . The US government experimented with using underground nuclear explosions to fracture the rock and enable gas recovery from the rock . Such explosions were tried in the San Juan Basin of New Mexico ( Project Gasbuggy , 1967 ) , and the Piceance Basin of Western Colorado ( Project Rulison , 1969 , and Project Rio Blanco , 1973 ) but the results were disappointing , and the tests were halted . The petroleum industry turned to the new massive hydraulic fracturing technique as the way to recover tight gas
Project Rulison
Project Rulison
Hydraulic fracturing in the United States