USA Today Asks, Is Your State Next for Gas Drilling?

Today’s issue of USA Today sports a major article on shale gas drilling. It mostly points out the negatives, although for USA Today it’s about as “balanced” as it can get (with a few paragraphs about the benefits of drilling).

The article starts this way:

The script might not play out exactly the same in each new community touched by the nationwide boom in natural gas and oil drilling, but the changes have a familiar echo:

Trucks. Noise. Cash. Conflict.

Since the late 1990s, American landscapes have become dotted with a small forest of shale gas wells — 13,000 new ones a year, or about 35 a day, according to the American Petroleum Institute. In the past decade, this steady stream of development has become a gusher as nearly half the country has staked claim to these energy riches. In 2000, the USA had 342,000 natural gas wells. By 2010, more than 510,000 were in place — a 49% jump — according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Twenty states have shale gas wells, so-named because they tap rock layers that harbor the gas in shale formations (with names such as Marcellus, Utica, Barnett). The bulk of the drilling has come since 2006, according to the EIA.

Wherever drilling happens, life changes.*

Indeed life does change wherever drilling happens—mostly for the better.

Included with the article are a few infographics, somewhat helpful. Probably worth your time to click on the link below and read the entire article.

*USA Today (Jun 27, 2012) – Natural gas gold rush: Is your state next?