Just sign here. The nation's desperate hunt for energy begins here as well as anywhere, in the gullet of rural America, under an old rancher's porch. But the search is also dogged by controversy. Deep under the rolling plains are pools of natural gas so vast they make Arctic oil look like chump bait. Inventors, Texas oilmen, even ex-shoe salesmen are storming northeast Wyoming to suck the methane from waterlogged coal beds.
Fortunes hang on the new process.
Not only that, but hundreds of new power plants planned across the nation, from New York to Otay Mesa, will need coal-bed fuel and other natural gases to run. But in Wyoming, many ranchers and conservationists say runoff water from methane mining stunts crops, kills trees and spikes rivers and wells with high levels of salt. It's reshaping ranch life, too. Much of Wyoming remains remote and raw, a land of wood-paneled roadhouses and cattle amid oceans of alfalfa. Ranchers relish being off the beaten path.