Billionaire Alejandro Bulgheroni’s dream of making fracking more environmentally friendly is running up against the reality of shale-patch economics. The Argentine oil tycoon has pumped about $250 million into developing the technology behind Evolution Well Services, a Texas-based company that makes fracking equipment powered by natural gas produced at drillers’ wells instead of diesel that has to be trucked into fields. EWS has been in business for five years and has deployed seven crews in the U.S., well below its expectation of about 20 by now even as companies push to cut carbon footprints. EWS’s conundrum illustrates the obstacles for so-called electric fracking, which faced concerns about costs even as it started gathering steam in earnest about two years ago. While the […]