Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/natural-gas-boom-impacts-rural-wyoming-town Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript A natural gas boom in Wyoming has had both positive and negative impacts on a once small town. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. BETTY ANN BOWSER, NewsHour Correspondent: Every summer, the 1,600 residents of Pinedale, Wyoming, stage a three-day event called the Rendezvous. One of the highlights is a rodeo that celebrates the rich Western cow town heritage that residents, like Chopper and Lyn Grassell, say is changing too fast. LYN GRASSELL, Pinedale Resident: When we moved here, it was ranching. It was small. You knew everybody on the street. And now it's oil and gas. It's a lot of oil and gas.We were talking earlier. I think that there's a big push from the agricultural side to keep that, keep the kids knowing how to ride horses, and come to the rodeo, and experience all that. But then you have oil and gas that's coming in. It's just a whole new group of people. BETTY ANN BOWSER: The Green River Valley of Wyoming is in the middle of a natural gas boom. Pinedale, in rural Sublette County, is ground zero. It's where companies, like EnCana USA, have rushed to take advantage of the current energy crisis and have started a massive drilling operation in the Jonah Field, considered the richest natural gas deposit in the country.Paul Ulrich is EnCana's spokesman.PAUL ULRICH, EnCana Oil and Gas: We think we've got about 13.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas here in the Jonah Field. That's enough to heat America for about two-thirds of a year, you know, give or take a little bit, a lot of natural gas.