Drilling Down: British petrochemical giant Ineos plans to begin fracking in Texas

British petrochemical giant Ineos plans to do in Texas what it can’t do back home in the United Kingdom - horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. As part of an unpublicized deal, Ineos bought tens of thousands of acres of Austin Chalk leases from Houston oil company Crawford Hughes in August 2019, Railroad Commission of Texas records show. Over the past month, Ineos has filed for a pair of drilling permits to develop two horizontal wells targeting the Giddings field of the Austin Chalk geological formation on two leases near La Grange, a Fayette County town about 65 miles southeast of Austin. The permits are the first filed by Ineos under its own name. With total depths down to 10,500 feet, the wells will give Ineos more practice with shale drilling. The company, which owns petrochemical plants in Texas and elsewhere around the world, unsuccessfully sought to bring the shale revolution to the United Kingdom.