Where does the gas come from?

How did all that gas get into those rocks sitting thousands of feet below the ground?

According to geologist Don Zaengle, the gas was formed from 450 million to 380 million years ago. This was before plants evolved on the planet, before there were dinosaurs, and well before humans showed up on the scene.

A very deep ocean then covered the region, which was populated with microscopic organisms. Over millions of years, the microorganisms lived, died and drifted to the bottom of the ocean. The ocean was so deep that there was no oxygen, and thus the dead organisms did not decay, but instead were preserved in the shale as gas.

Fast forward a few hundred million years, and now a person owning 100 acres of land above that shale, with a successful gas well, might be able to earn more than $600,000 per year for perhaps 20 years by allowing companies to extract that ancient gas to provide energy for human use.