For years, Midland, Texas, was a quiet corner of the oil patch, in the middle of the desert, hours away from the state's population centers. It knew oil booms and oil busts, but little changed year-to-year. Then came fracking, and Midland, the center of a West Texas region known as the Permian Basin, would never be the same again. The technology of injecting water into the ground to force up oil and gas locked in the shale put huge fossil fuel deposits within reach that had never been economically available before. Production soared, a key to the United States becoming the world's largest oil producer. With increased ... (full story)