If America wants to reduce its dependence on dirty foreign oil and quit fighting capitalist wars we should develop our own natural gas by increasing production through horizontal drilling in a responsible manner.

Those who oppose natural gas production are, knowingly or not, pawns of King Coal.

WV should lead the nation with developing sources of use. For example, the state probably owns 20,000 vehicles and most go to a county garage every night. What a perfect place to begin building the structure of clean burning gas distribytion for transportation.

I believe the companies need to start doing real reclaimation not just put some seed on a slope for it to slip in a few years. I also believe the fees for wells should be high enough to pay for the inspectors in short the tax payers should not prop the industry up they should be able to do this themselves. And then we should also have a tax on all coal and gas shipped out of state and I am not talking about a few pennies I am talking about real money so the state can us it for the betterment of it's citizens. THis is just a start but we must also remember that WV export more coal then we use, we export this coal to countries that we know all take advantage of their cheap labor to take the jobs of the hard working people in WV that work or have worked in the steel industry. Yes for each 100 tons of coal you shipm overseas it is eastimated you take 1 US job. So all you who are for this I hope you enjoy taking other peoples jobs.

If coal and gas were good for West Virginia, then why is the state one of the poorest in the country. Coal has been mined in WV for over 100 years and look how well the state has prospered. MTR and fracking will forever pollute our water and continue to destroy our beautiful mountains. The only thing left is tourism and even that is being taken away. Wake up West Virginia and take control of your environment. We can develop safer ways to keep the lights on.

i agree with mike because all my family has always done something with coal.. and if people dont understand COAL keeps the lights on!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am a coal truck driver and my Dad is a underground miner and where we live you can throw a rock and hit someone who has something to do with coal here and if we didnt have these jobs this state would not survive, and ruth needs to read her bible more God will replenish the earth. Way to many people believe all this garbage of how bad drilling is, dont believe all the hype from the liberals cause they are ALWAYS wrong anyway