In the rolling farm country of central New York state, the cicadas buzz, the barn swallows swoop and the natural gas hisses. Covered from head to toe in a baggy blue safety suit, Jennifer McIntosh, a geochemist from the University of Arizona in Tucson, leans over a rusty wellhead as she extracts a sample. A moment later the hissing stops and a small silver canister, now full of gas, is unfastened and packed away, ready for the lab.
Over 1.5 billion cubic metres of natural gas were extracted in New York state last year, yet there remains a certain element…
