Meet Guar, the Tiny Green Bean That Makes Fracking Possible

When we think about fracking, sinister synthetic chemical cocktails come to mind—not legumes. So, for a controversial practice that might cause earthquakes, it's a bit odd to consider that a tiny green bean helps make it all possible. But that's guar.

A glorified lima bean grown mainly in India and Pakistan, guar is a legume that can be used for animal feed, human veggies, and as a gluten-free thickening agent. Also, it can blast through solid shale to release natural gas trapped in underwater rocks. It's the bean behind the modern oil industry.

Fracking with Vegetables

The oil industry, predictably, wants more oil. For a while, the standard practice was pretty much to wait for oil to seep out of the earth by itself, and then drill like crazy. But about 65 years ago, when a few oil mongers grew tired of waiting for fuel to come to them, hydraulic fracturing was born.

A lot of natural gas and oil is trapped inside tight clusters of rock deep underground. The trick is to bombard that rock with high-power, super-viscous water until it fractures, releasing the hydrocarbons inside.

Thick, soupy water does it best, because the whole blowing-up-rocks-with-water enterprise is much more efficient if the water has some heft to it. Viscous water is also particularly good at carrying sand granules deep inside the fractured rock. When an oil company turns off the water pump, their hard-earned fracture will slam shut unless a large number of these granules have infiltrated the rock to keep it propped open for next time.

Ready to turn ordinary water into a badass fracking gel? Just add a little guar. Powder made from guar beans is the ultimate thickening agent. In 2011, guar gum was India's single largest agricultural export to the United States, with sales of about $915 million. The vast majority of that guar went directly to the oil industry.

Big Oil Meets The Small Farm

Initially, the guar boom made a lot of money for very poor farmers in India. Many eager farmers shunned their typical cash crops like cotton in favor of the far more lucrative bean. According to the New York Times, it lifted thousands out of poverty.

But then, the bubble burst. By 2012, US oil companies had started shopping around. They found that they could get cheaper guar elsewhere—farmers in Texas finally succeeded in growing the legume themselves, and China began producing a synthetic, guar gum rip-off. India's guar gum exports plummeted.

Growing guar in Texas has its own problems. West Texas Guar Inc., the premier US facility for turning raw guar into useful powder, recently declared bankruptcy. As a result, tens of millions of pounds of guar is currently sitting in silos, waiting for the companies to sort this out. In the meantime, hundreds of farmers have still not been paid for their guar.

Where's Guar Going Next?

By all accounts, the oil industry would rather not fight for its guar. Hydrocolloids, the key thickening agents inside guar gum, can be synthesized in the laboratory—and oil giants like Halliburton and Schlumberger are trying to do just that.

"They have all got something, but nothing works as well as guar," Dennis Seisun, head of IMR International, a hydrocolloid consulting company, told Time magazine in 2012. Since then, China has entered the synthetic hydrocolloid market, too.

But at least for the foreseeable future, the fracking industry will probably continue to rely on natural guar. It's a unique and troubled marriage between farmers and Big Oil, but one that seems to beat the synthetic alternatives.

The awkward result? For now, one of fracking's most important ingredients remains just about as green as can be.