High Natural Gas Prices Spur Drilling Boom

Wednesday, July 5th 2006, 7:56 am

By: News On 6

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) Spurred by high natural gas prices, petroleum companies -- including one from Tulsa, Oklahoma -- are snapping up leases across southern Indiana in hopes of drilling for the gas lying far beneath the land's surface.

Prices are $6.00 or more per 1,000 cubic feet of natural gas. That's about double the prices seen during the 1990s.

Houston-based El Paso Corporation has leased 225,000 acres in the Daviess County area. Hunt Petroleum of Dallas and Samson Investment Company of Tulsa have also signed leases or started drilling.

Charles Zuppann, a petroleum geologist at the Indiana Geological Survey, predicts there will be considerably more drilling in the next year or two.