Natural Gas
Wyoming has the second highest proved reserves of natural gas in the country, and provides the United States with 10 percent of its natural gas. Production has more than doubled in Wyoming in the past ten years. In 2006, more drilling permits were issued in Wyoming than in the rest of the country combined, including permits to drill in sage-grouse and big-game habitat. In the Upper Green River Valley, the Jonah and Pinedale Anticline Fields cover about 228,000 acres of public land, much of which is developed in dense gas-drilling operations. To the south of the Upper Green, hundreds of thousands of acres in the Red Desert face the same threat. And to the northeast, in the Powder River Basin, the BLM projects 51,000 coalbed methane well pads spread over 200,000 acres by 2014. Much of the southwestern third of the state is leased for oil and gas drilling, while the southeastern corner faces a boom in other forms of energy development. As Governor Dave Freudenthal put it, “The federal government needs to take the thumb off the scale. Right now the thumb is on the side of mineral development. That thumb is really big” (Washington Post).