by Nancy Houser

Created on: October 25, 2008

The issue of developing a much needed fuel in Wyoming or maintaining the quality of Wyoming's lands is occurring at one of the most sensitive times in the history of the United States. Presently the state of Wyoming is considered one of the nine states with a gain in jobs, instead of massive job losses as in the other states. This is due to the high need for natural resources in today's world, and instead of buying oil from overseas a decision was made to reopen and redevelop closed oil fields. A development of coal bed methane in both Montana and Wyoming has occured, with the countryside now littered with underground pipes, newly developed roads, huge compressors, and little housing boxes which contain coal bed methane wellsappearing as an industrial war zone.

Over 15,000 coal bed methane wells have been developed from 1990 to 2004, with an untapped potential in Wyoming's underground seams of coal which have formed into the future planning and development of an additional 35,000 coal bed methane wells. The area involved is the Powder River Basin which straddles both Wyoming and Montana. This has brought about a major legal challenge to Wyoming's environmental studies, pushed by the Bush administration to have the Buffalo area office expedite approximately 3,000 applications a year for the much-needed wells. With these high numbers, the impact on the land would be tremendous which brings about the question of fuel vs. land, which is more important?

More aggressive than Montana, the state of Wyoming has developed plans for up to 51,000 wells in ten years while simultaneously examining its impact on their water, air, roads and the country's economy with the environmental groups suing the state for not allowing enough protection for the environmental issues as stakeparticularly water and air qualitywith additional rulings for the protection of wildlife.

DEVELOPMENT OF COAL BED METHANE IN WYOMING

In history up to the middle of the 1980s, coal bed methane was considered very dangerous to coal miners and was not developed as a natural resource, but changes have developed in technical advances which changed the thinking regarding them. The problem with mining methane gas is that it will impact the supply of water on a daily basissomething which will definitely hurt the land and everything around it.

The gas first must be captured in order to prepare it for market, which involves its freeing from coal seams with water pressure causing the newly developing gas to adhere

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