Cross Country

How Texas Struck It Rich Beneath Suburbia

Updated Aug. 2, 2008 12:01 a.m. ET

Austin, Texas

In the 1980s, Houston wildcatter George Mitchell drilled the first well into the Barnett Shale formation that stretches through north and central Texas. He tapped into what would turn out to be one of the largest onshore natural gas reserves in the United States.

It would take nearly two decades and millions of dollars to...

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