By 2001, Mitchell Energy & Development had attracted the attention of the oil and gas industry. Its output was somehow growing even as costs fell. The usual dynamic in energy is that companies target the most cost-effective projects first; they can grow, but only by drilling in places where the breakeven cost is higher. 272 But a key element of the economics of fracking is that as companies scale up, their marginal cost goes down as they get more efficient at fracking in general and at understanding the dynamics of particular areas in which they’re active. This is precisely what happened at
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