After decades of anxiety that began with the “oil crisis” of the 1970s, the United States achieved what few believed it could. In 2008, it became the world’s No. 1 producer of oil and gas.

Overtaking oil-producing giants like Saudi Arabia, Russia, Canada and the UAE was made possible largely by introducing fracking as a new extraction technique. Fracking has been around since 1949, but advancing technology started making it more viable in the late 1980s.

Since then, fracking has grown increasingly sophisticated and has become a powerful method for improving the flow of oil and gas from shale deposits locked deep beneath the earth’s surface.

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