Posted: Dec 30, 2012 1:03 PM by CBS News Updated: Dec 30, 2012
1:07 PM (CBS News) Natural gas can be cheap and plentiful, and
could supply us with energy for decades to come. But to get at
all that natural gas, you have to delve far beneath the surface
of the earth. That's where fracking comes in. David Pogue of The
New York Times reports CBS Sunday Morning's cover ctory: What if
I told you that we have a new source of fuel? It's cheap, it
burns cleaner than coal, it's found right here in America, and
there's enough of it for the next hundred years. The fuel is
natural gas. And the new source? Gigantic deposits of shale
rock, miles underground. This one is called the Marcellus Shale.
It covers 95,000 square miles, across four states. The gas is
locked in the rock. If you crack a piece off you can actually
smell the gas inside. Pogue toured a new shale-gas well with
George Stark, who represents Cabot Oil and Gas, the second
largest gas producer in the Marcellus. "Typically we're pulling
in, in an average day,