I once asked one of my oil majors clients why they hadn’t invested in nonconventionals, and he offhandedly replied, “We don’t understand why fracking works, and

I once asked one of my oil majors clients why they hadn’t invested in nonconventionals, and he offhandedly replied, “We don’t understand why fracking works, and we don’t invest in anything where we don’t understand the downhole dynamics.” Basically, there were lots of theories as to why you could get oil and gas out of tight shale after shotgunning it to hell and back, but no consensus, and you can’t get the kind of logging you need under those conditions to really test which theory holds water, so to speak. Conversely, the big fracking players were much less concerned with, to be completely frank, safety and well integrity compared to the major players, so moved faster, often with troubling but quite profitable results. (Even so, those companies have invested quite a bit in university research to figure out what’s going on, while my client’s company made a major onshore bet, albeit after he retired from leadership.)