> How is that even economically viable?

Are you kidding? It's like drilling up geysers of money.

The ten most profitable companies in the world are nine oil companies and Apple.

Count the cars and trucks and planes and generators and leaf-blowers and chainsaws and every piece of plastic ever and thousands of chemical byproducts... oil is everywhere.

I’m guessing here, but I think the number seems high because shale wells have short lifespans. The declines are much higher than conventional wells, and so there are a great many of them to maintain production as the wells decline. There are large a number of DUCs, or drilled but uncompleted wells. They maintain these so that when one well runs dry, another can be brought online to maintain production targets. Also it’s more economic to drill as many wells as you can as quickly as possible even if it exceeds targets because there are economies of scale when it comes to moving and leasing rigs that drill the wells.

Have you ever looked at Google maps/Earth of Texas? Zoom out to a couple thousand feet, and look at all of the little white dots across the surface. Each one of those little dots is a fracking well. Seeing it from this view is quite shocking. Look at how close houses/schools/etc are next to these well sites.

Spoiler, it's not. Gas companies have been bleeding money.

> How is that even economically viable?

You bribe politicians into removing regulations to lower the costs