HOUSTON From the prairies of Texas to the wooded hills of the Northeast, crews are busy drilling, looking for natural gas.
And these days, Houston s oil companies are doing 80 percent of their drilling for gas, not black gold.
Houston is the natural gas capitol of the world, Walter Tad Mayfield of Goldston Oil Corp. said. It is for real, it s good for Houston.
The energy industry says natural gas is the clean alternative to oil and coal, and it says there s a hundred-years supply just waiting to be tapped right here in the U.S.
That would mean billions in profits for Houston s No. 1 business.
But increasingly, people who don t live here say it s coming at their expense.
A group of people living near Fort Worth have even called for a halt to the drilling.
Crews have been sinking hundreds of wells in that area after discovering one of the biggest gas fields in the country.
But Texas environmental investigators found some of the well sites were emitting high levels of benzene, a cancer-causing chemical.
Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, residents fear the drilling is affecting the purity of their tap water so much so that they sued a company called Cabot Oil and Gas, which is based in Houston.
The lawsuit is just one example of what seems to be mounting suspicion elsewhere in the country about what Texas oil companies are up to.
In fact, New York filmmaker Josh Fox is making a documentary about it, called Gasland.
Fox traveled to Texas to find answers about the drilling a trip that apparently required a certain level of courage.
I was very intimidated to go to places like Texas, Fox said in his film.
Gasland is being used to drum up opposition to drilling in New York.
The film s most-promoted scene, in which a man lights his tap water on fire, implies that drilling is polluting well water with natural gas. But TV reporters in Pennsylvania found other tap water with natural gas in it, except officials said that gas was seeping in naturally not because of drilling.
The Texas drilling industry agrees. In Texas, companies use the fracking technique of drilling, in which rock formations are fractured to release the gas.
Not one documented case where they can show fracking harmed freshwater, Mayfield said. This is the EPA saying this.
Just last month, the EPA proposed doing a nationwide study about the drilling. Critics believe the study could prove that the drilling poses a threat.
The industry says it s willing to do what s best for the environment, but notes that over-regulation could threaten a key source of clean-burning domestic fuel: natural gas.
