"NORTHFIELD, Mass. — Standing on a dirt road outside his aging barn, Walter Jaworski, a former veterinarian turned cattle rancher in this rural part of north-central Massachusetts, points south across his 200 acres of forest and pasture to a nearby tree line. If things don’t go his way, he says, that’s about where a new natural gas pipeline will slice through his land on a 180-mile journey from central New York to a transmission hub north of Boston.

The project, proposed by the pipeline giant Kinder Morgan at a cost of $2 billion to $3 billion “or more,” according to the company, is only in the earliest stages of consideration. But debate over its placement — and even its overall need — is in full swing, with anti-pipeline yard signs and heated public meetings.

Mr. Jaworski is just one of thousands of public and private property owners here who find themselves wedged between the mammoth shale gas supply being unleashed in states to the west, like Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, and the increasingly insatiable market for the fuel in New England."

Tom Zeller Jr. reports for the New York Times July 10, 2014. [2]