With energy prices on a precipitous rise in recent years, industry and government have high hopes that the discovery of large natural gas deposits in the United States will provide a cheaper fuel option while boosting the domestic economy. Relatively new technology allows gas companies to extract natural gas from formerly inaccessible shale at greater depths than ever before. Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” can now be used to extract natural gas by drilling wells, usually thousands of feet below the surface, then drilling horizontally, and ultimately injecting millions of gallons of water mixed with sand and chemicals at high pressure to break up the shale and release the gas. Hydraulic fracturing using horizontal wells was first used in Texas to extract gas from the Barnett Shale, and it was imported to eastern states starting in 2003, when the first horizontal well was drilled in Pennsylvania to tap the Marcellus Shale. The Marcellus Shale spans 48,000 square miles and contains large amounts of gas re- serves primarily underneath West Virginia, eastern Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. As new technologies make these deep deposits accessible for the first time, companies like Shell, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil are investing billions of dollars in U.S. shale gas production.