The Industrial Prairie

The Bush administration is about to approve the largest-ever gas-drilling project on federal land. The New York Times provides an in-depth look at the environmental impact of the drilling.

1 minute read

December 29, 2002, 9:00 AM PST

By Abhijeet Chavan @http://twitter.com/legalaidtech


"This is the cantankerous world of energy extraction in the Rocky Mountain West, where natural gas is abundant and cheap to remove, and where the Bush administration, in its aggressive push to increase domestic energy production, is on the brink of approving the largest-ever gas-drilling project on federal land. Here in Wyoming's Powder River Basin, the Bureau of Land Management says that early next year it will give final approval to the drilling of 39,000 wells on eight million acres.With natural gas consumption expected to soar in the next two decades, no one questions the need for new sources of this clean-burning fossil fuel. What alarms ranchers, along with environmental groups, is the hugely disruptive process of getting gas out of all those wells."

Thanks to Abhijeet Chavan

Sunday, December 29, 2002 in The New York Times

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