Beginning in 2007, shale gas development began to expand in a big way in West Virginia, due to advancements in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling. As it turned out, parts of West Virginia are located atop what is now the nation’s largest shale gas play, the Marcellus. Shale gas development has often been referred to as a “game changer” in the domestic energy industry, particularly as making natural gas the fuel of choice for generating electricity at baseload power plants (i.e., generating plants that are the cheapest and generally run around the clock). Within six years, natural gas would surpass coal as the leading source of fuel for electricity generation, due to its lower cost and the high efficiency of new natural gas fired combined cycle combustion turbines, especially compared with the economics of the region’s aging fleet of coal plants, many of which were over forty years old.