US-based multinational conglomerate GE is planning to invest billions of dollars to improve fracking, which is a new boom of oil and gas drilling.
Fracking is a technique in which 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 environmental and health hazards related with it.
The company said it will open a new laboratory in Oklahoma, US, buy related companies to enhance advanced technology to improve client’s profits, and reduce environmental and health effects of fracking.
GE, which doesn’t drill any wells or produce oil or gas, expects to enhance its strengths from the complexities and techniques involved with fracking.
Oil and gas companies drill wells horizontally at great depths in a variety of formations across US, and that means each location may require different techniques.
GE senior vice president Mark Little said the company has invested about $15bn in the past few years in oil and gas sector.