Unconventional natural gas from shale and tight sand formations could be a game-changer for the industry. One wild card is environmental rules that could affect exploration and production companies. What model would you point to as appropriate to balance health and safety issues with ongoing resource development? Nichols: There is no doubt that the resources we've discovered from natural gas are clean, abundant and here in the U.S. That is a great threat to environmentalists that want to develop alternate energy sources since they're dramatically more expensive than natural gas. One effort they've been trying to do is giving the federal government control of all onshore drilling just as the federal government has control of offshore drilling. One has to only look at the state models that have been in existence for decades to see that the models we have are working perfectly accurately. Our industry has pointed out
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