The largest issue offering so far this year was yesterday's $250 million issue of Mitchell Energy and Development Corporation notes due in 1997.

But Mitchell Energy was typically drilling 300 wells a year before prices plunged last year.

Techniques such as fracturing, or "fracking", wells, used by Mitchell Energy, opened the possibility of more large scale production.

(Paid $871,000 by Mitchell Energy in fiscal 1991, the most recent figure available, he also gets nearly $12 million a year in company dividends.)

Mitchell Energy has 57 gas processing plants, most of which can be hauled to other sites when aging wells are shut down.

But only one of their 10 children has any role at Mitchell Energy.

Mitchell Energy contributes $3.5 million a year to the research center's $14 million annual budget.

Mitchell Energy utilized all these component technologies and techniques to achieve the first economic shale fracture in 1998 using an innovative process called slick-water fracturing.

In 1998, Mitchell Energy drilled the first commercially successful well for natural gas using a horizontal drilling technique called 'slick water' fracturing.

Morgan Stanley, for example, recently picked up a development called the Woodlands from Mitchell Energy.