WSJ: Drillers Unleash ‘Super-Size’ Natural Gas Output

The U.S. may have far more natural gas than anyone imagined, all reachable at a profit even with today’s bargain-basement prices.

Experimental wells in Louisiana by explorers including Comstock Resources Inc. and Chesapeake Energy Inc. are proving highly lucrative thanks to modern drilling techniques and the sheer volume of fossil fuels that can be coaxed out of the ground.

The trick is applying supersize versions of the horizontal-drilling and fracking techniques that worked successfully elsewhere to an area that hasn’t seen this approach yet. The gains come from extending the lateral portions of wells by thousands of feet and pumping them full of enormous volumes of sand, chemicals and water to flush out more hydrocarbons.

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