No place blessed with an abundance of natural gas is safe from the possibility of fracking — not even cemeteries.
In Texas, the president of the cemetery association has already been selling the gas underneath his graveyard, the Centre Daily Times reports:
[John] Stephenson leased mineral rights under two of his cemeteries within the past three years, he said. Each is about a century old and populated with 75,000 graves. Revenue from the leases — he wouldn’t say how much — has allowed him to pave roads, repair fences and make other improvements during economic hard times.
To be fair, the drilling rigs don’t necessarily have to be installed right next to grandma’s headstone. Horizontal fracking means the rigs can be far enough away from the site to leave mourners in peace. And you don’t need to worry about the water or air quality of your surroundings if you’re already dead. Still, there’s something kind of unsavory about it. At least the gas companies will learn their lesson when they accidentally suck a vampire right up one of their pipes.
