When you lick an ice cream cone, eat a grilled cheese sandwich or brush your teeth, chances are you’re consuming a ubiquitous ingredient called guar gum. It’s a thickening agent whose profile has recently received a boost, thanks to the energy industry, which is using it to unlock previously unstoppable oil and gas deposits.

In a process known as hydraulic fracturing or fracking, thickened water (hence the use of guar) is pumped into energy-rich rock formations to create cracks, which allows oil and gas to escape. Fracking technology dates back to the 1940’s but it has only recently become a big part of oil and gas extraction because of the shale gas boom.

So how big it is? One estimate suggests that a typical oil well consumes roughly 4,000 kilograms of guar, putting pressure on the world’s guar resources, about 80% of which are in India. That pressure sent the prices soaring – it crossed $28,000 (U.S.) a metric ton in 2012, up twelvefold in a single year.

Historically, guar has been the lowest cost gelling agent that the industry could buy, as a natural product, it is environmentally friendly, and even if guar costs 10 per cent to 15 per cent more than chemical substitutes, drillers still prefer Guar. It is by far the best product for Fracking as it is 100 percent all natural. It is the same part of the plant used in food products, which are used in to make fracking gel, thus taking care of environment.