Commodities expert Matt Badiali says Pennsylvania will be the center of America’s next great energy boom. The state is home to the mammoth Marcellus shale bed, a sedimentary rock rich in natural gas. Experts have estimated that up to 1,000 trillion cubic feet of gas could be extracted from Marcellus. Matt says it won’t be long before the share prices of companies setting up there will take off.

Editor’s note: What are shale fields, and how easy is it to suck oil out of them? That depends, says Matt Badiali. As companies like Schlumberger (SLB), Halliburton (HAL) and Baker Hughes (BHI) are finding out, if it’s a permeable reservoir then it’s all systems go. If it’s an impermeable reservoir, then it will take time, effort and horizontal drilling.

This piece is taken from The Growth Stock Wire. It’s in the form of a questions and answers session. But it’s well worth the read if you’re interested in the ins and outs of shale oil.

Oil is the energy resource that captures public attention, but its poor cousin natural gas could be the one now offering more interesting investment opportunities.

A recent story in the Financial Times covered the possibility that Nigeria’s crude oil output could fall by a third in the next seven years. The problem is, Nigeria is one of the top five foreign oil suppliers to the U.S.