Ice cream ingredient boosts fracking cost

Guar gum, used as a thickening agent for both ice cream and hydraulic fracturing fluids, is giving Halliburton, the world’s second-largest oilfield services company, a brain freeze.

“It’s not been a fun day for us,” Halliburton Chief Financial Officer Mark McCollum said this earlier this week after announcing that profits for the oil field giant will drop twice as much as expected in North America.

A lack of rain in India, the primary provider of guar beans, combined with a failure to account for increased demand, have caused a shortage which is driving prices up to double where they once…