KEY POINTS:
Judy was, until very recently, a normal 61-year-old great grandmother from rural Arkansas who taught English at the local middle school and spent her spare time taking care of five troublesome terriers.
Now, in a story reminiscent of the 1960s sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies, she has joined a
rapidly growing group of millionaires cashing in on a natural gas gold rush that is sweeping the American south.
The Haynesville Shale is a massive geological formation 3600m below the soil of rural northwest Louisiana that is said to contain enough natural gas to supply much of America's needs for the next decade and beyond. It has been known about for years, but only recently has the technology been available to exploit it to the full.
The world's biggest natural gas exploration companies, including Shell, Conoco, Chesapeake, Petrohawk and EnCana, have descended on the vast area between the Arkansas border and Shreveport, Louisiana, to tap what most experts agree is a reservoir of about 6.8 trillion cubic metres of gas.
Local farmers own the land above these massive gas pockets, as do a large number of householders and some speculators, and there are large tracts owned by the State of Louisiana. And if the gas giants want to get their equipment drilling working in time to cash in they are having to pay up - big time.
"The reality is there is a lot of people making some pretty damn serious money down here thanks to this natural gas," said Don Briggs, president of the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association.
And Judy - who wants to withhold her last name for fear of attracting too much attention to her newfound wealth - is one of them.
Judy's parents were farmers on the outskirts of Bossier City, Louisiana until her father passed away when she was 7. "I inherited half the farm that day, I was an only child," Judy said.
"I inherited the rest in 1991."
She vowed never to sell the land, even though half of it was virtually worthless swampland. But then, in March this year, her telephone at home in Arkansas started ringing non stop with gas company reps and land brokers offering to buy or lease her land.
"First they were offering me $200 an acre, then $500, but I am not stupid," Judy said, "I told them that if their gas was so precious they would have to come up with something better."
After a couple of months of stiff negotiating she walked away with a cheque for about US$4.5 million ($6.4 million), and she didn't even have to sell her land.
"I leased the land to Chesapeake for five years, after which they have to put it back exactly as they found it," Judy said.
Much of the land that sits above the Haynesville shale had a lease value of about US$300 an acre until this spring, when a ferocious bidding war broke out.
Now the same tracts of land are commanding prices as high as US$25,000 and US$30,000 an acre, so locals say.
And by the time the big gas companies have finished, there will be plenty more hillbilly millionaires like Judy.
"It is possibly the fourth largest gas discovery in the world and the largest in the United States," said Briggs.
"It's big."
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