P. C. BOYLE (1846-1920) – THE ORIGINAL ANTI-FRACKER, BUT FOR A DIFFERENT REASON

In the early decades of the 21^st century, few topics in the energy industry draw more attention than the process of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to increase permeability in an oil or gas reservoir. Yet the process is over a hundred years old, only the mechanisms and techniques used to fracture the rock have changed. Today some kind of fluid (water, natural gas, etc.), chemicals, and sand, all under very high pressures, are used; “back in the day” it was nitroglycerine in a metal tube sent down the well. Even protests associated with the process are not recent phenomena, for Patrick C. Boyle, a journalist and newspaper publisher in the late 19^th Century, spoke out against the Roberts Torpedo Company, the major company involved in the oil well fracture business in western Pennsylvania and southern New York. But Boyle’s objections had little to do with environmental concerns, he was anti-monopoly, and in his mind, due to various court decisions, the Roberts Brothers’ Company was a monopoly. This paper will explore some of Boyle’s life, the fracking process of his day, and his protests using the Richburg, New York newspaper, The Oil Echo, which he published.