In Obama's home state! I love this.

Last year I posted on how there was an oil boom in North Dakota with fracking and how people were leaving the "solar industy" for real jobs.

Now to add insult to injury we're looking at the next oil fracking boom. In Illinois!

Fracking Fairfield: New technology moving in southern Illinois

FAIRFIELD, Ill. ——

BMWs, Lincolns and other cars with Louisiana, Texas and Colorado license plates fill so many parking spaces around the Wayne County Courthouse that it's tough for residents to find spots for their pickups.

Two blocks west, lunchtime business at Jemini Coffee House nearly doubles on some days with new customers who are a little secretive.

And fresh phrases are creeping into the local vernacular — vocabulary such as "lease hound" and "modern-day Clampetts," a reference to the hit 1960s TV comedy "The Beverly Hillbillies," about a backwoods family that strikes oil.

Wayne County, a rural locale about 270 miles south of Chicago, is experiencing a land rush thanks to a controversial effort to tap into hard-to-reach oil and gas deposits.

A relatively new twist on a 65-year-old technology, horizontal hydraulic fracturing may enable energy companies to hit pay dirt in southern Illinois. And representatives of those companies — many from the big oil states — are descending on the region, digging through land records at courthouses, then offering leases to farmers and other owners of mineral rights.

As much as $100 million has been spent on leasing rights in the region, according to one industry representative. Wayne County, population 17,000, is the state's hot spot. At least six companies are there acquiring leases.

Amid the excitement and mystery, however, is a measure of anxiety. A regional group is scrambling to muster opposition as state lawmakers rush to stitch together regulations. Looming over Wayne and several other southern Illinois counties is a national debate that, at the extremes, pits the promise of energy independence and economic gain against the specter of environmental catastrophe.

"Nobody knows for sure what's going on with all this," said Jim McGill, owner of Jemini. "It's kind of hard to tell right now what it's going to look like."

Fracking, the common term for freeing oil and natural gas by pumping millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals into rock deep beneath the surface, has been around for decades. The high-pressure injections are administered more than 4,000 feet below ground, fracturing the rock cobweb-style and allowing fossil fuel to be channeled with the sand, water and chemical mix through the well and to the surface.

Crews then extract the oil and gas and dispose of leftover, toxic liquid.

The relatively new wrinkle that raises both hope and concern is horizontal drilling. In the last decade, companies have been drilling vertical wells, then turning that drilling horizontally through the shale layer, fracking for oil and gas along the way.

The technique has led to speculation that enough fossil fuel can be extracted below the surface of the United States to meet the nation's energy needs for decades. It also has frightened and angered environmentalists.

"Once you look at it, you're like, 'Oh my God, this is horrible,'" said Liz Petula, coordinator of Southern-Illinoisans Against Fracturing our Environment, or SAFE, a grass-roots group that has organized opposition in six counties and is working to gain a foothold in Wayne. She called the combination of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling "catastrophic."...

No kidding Liz, you're an enviro nutcase. Anything that leds to progress, economic growth, etc in this nation you are against. To paraphrase Archine Bunker, "I'm as liberal you! I'm against everything that's right!"

Good article and it shows how the private sector is doing everything to bring energy to the market. In direct opposition of the efforts of the Obama regieme. Remember green jobs are our future. Yea, right. I have one question that never gets asked or answered by our objective media. How does a solar cell or windmill power a jet? Please Cokie Roberts, ask that of B Hussein Obama next time instread of questions about a "War on Women"!