Frigid weather across the United States has resulted in a recent increase in demand for heating fuels. Not too long ago, Americans thought that they would be in need of greater natural-gas imports from Canada, the Middle East, and other areas to meet increasing demand, inasmuch as natural gas is the main heating fuel in the U.S. But thanks to a large deposit of shale rock containing natural gas (the deposit stretches from New York to West Virginia[a]) and thanks to a drilling technique called hydraulic fracturing, there is now ample domestic natural gas to meet both residential heating demand and industrial and electric utility demand. And not only is this area of the U.S. endowed with natural gas resources, but other shale deposits of natural gas are located in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, among other states.[ii]
