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It’s rare that an independent oil company lasts 50 years through the economic ups and downs of the industry. It’s also rare that an independent company helps usher in a discovery that transforms the industry.

Both events are part of the history of Henry Resources and its founder Jim Henry and are recounted in a just-released book, “The Wolfberry Chronicle.”

“We helped pioneer a new fracturing treatment in the Permian Basin,” recounted Henry at a reception celebrating the book’s release. He added that the company didn’t pioneer the horizontal drilling that launched the shale boom but used the new treatment in vertical wells that combined production from the Spraberry and Wolfcamp formations, thus ‘Wolfberry.’

He wanted to tell the story of the company, which began life as H&L Consultants, opened by Henry and Bob Landenberger. A few years later he bought Landenberger out and proceeded as Henry Petroleum before selling to Concho Resources and starting anew as Henry Resources.

Beyond that, he said he wanted to tell the story of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling in a way that was understandable to the public.

“There’s a lot of misunderstanding about the oil industry,” Henry said. “The public thinks we’re polluters. I hope this helps them understand the industry.”

In seeking to celebrate the company’s 50th anniversary, Henry tried three times to have a book written. The effort was complicated by his desire to incorporate the technology of the fracturing treatment that went into developing the Wolfberry play.

“The first time (Henry tried to have a book written), Henry hadn’t pioneered the Wolfberry, so the best was yet to come,” said Gregory Berkhouse, who brought the project to completion.

“No one had ever told the Wolfberry story,” Berkhouse said. “There have been books on individuals, companies or on fracking, but not one mentioned the Wolfberry. It was a vertical play and what got the Permian Basin up and running. Then EOG Resources came in and started drilling sideways.”

Berkhouse brought to the book decades of experience as a geologist and engineer, including 21 years at Henry. Henry asked him to spend two years writing the book, he recalled, so he spent the first year evenly split between his oil and gas duties and the book, talking to people and doing background reading.

As this year dawned, he said he worked full-time on the book in order to complete it on time. He credited his editor in New York for the ‘painful’ process of editing the book and helping turn it into a good, marketable book.

Like Henry, Berkhouse said the goal was for the book to serve as a primer on the technology of fracturing as well as on the geology of the Permian Basin.

“Fracking has such bad PR because people don’t understand it,” said Berkhouse. “This book dispels all those myths.”

Said Henry, “Greg has done a super job of writing so people can understand, of explaining horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing so the public can understand. They think we’re polluters and we’re not. This both tells the story of our 50 years and how the oil company started and what it does. It’s very informative and easy reading.”

Mella McEwen is the Oil Editor for the Midland Reporter-Telegram.