Energy: Backyard Bonanza

A way to cut fuel bills: drill your own gas well

Beating the energy crisis is a cinch for hundreds of residents of Western Pennsylvania: they merely sink a well in their own backyard to tap the region's substantial deposits of natural gas. Though the area's gas fields are hardly in the same league as those in Texas and Louisiana, supplies are more than adequate to meet the heating and cooking needs of individual households and even provide an energy source for factories and electric utilities. The pace of new drilling has markedly quickened...

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