Like a lot of big oil and gas finds, this one started with one stubborn Texan.

George Mitchell had already found plenty of natural gas in his life. But he had a hunch that there was a lot more out there under the dusty plains of north Texas. He was a geologist by training and president of the gas company he founded with his brother in 1946 that helped fuel Chicago. Looking for more gas to feed his pipelines, Mitchell honed in on the idea of tapping into a concrete-like layer of rock called "shale."

It’s taken 17 years, but the method Mitchell pioneered for pulling natural gas from shale could change how Americans fuel cars, manufacture goods, and generate electricity as we look for ways to reduce global climate change. Abundance and steady supply could persuade utilities to shift from coal to gas. Lower costs could boost manufacturing and encourage efforts to fuel cars and trucks with natural gas instead of gasoline.

In fact, an industry-sponsored report released today says that shale-gas drilling, and its ripple effect through the economy could create well over 100,000 jobs in the next two years in Pennsylvania alone, and deliver nearly $1 billion to cash-starved state and local governments in 2011. The industry invested $4.5 billion in developing shale gas last year, leading to the creation of more than 44,000 jobs in a time of national recession and job losses, according to the report.

Back in the day, it was well known in the petroleum business that the dense shale formations spread around the country were laced with gas. But everyone understood that there was no economical way to pry it loose.

Everyone, it seems, but Mitchell. He argued with his crews and his board members at Mitchell Energy, and he spent more than $60 million to come up with the right formula to blast gas out of the shale. And finally he did. That was 1993.

"They kept telling me, 'You're wasting your time,'" Mitchell, now retired, recalled in a recent interview. "Well, it worked."

Now the energy industry and the country's policymakers are starting to realize the transformative potential of Mitchell's find. What had been a dwindling domestic resource is now an abundant fuel that burns twice as clean as coal.

Shale gas has more than doubled the size of North America's discovered natural gas, according to a study by IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates. The country now has enough gas to satisfy more than 100 years of consumption. And the United States recently overtook Russia as the second-largest global producer of gas.

"America has more shale gas than it knows what to do with," says T. Boone Pickens, who has made shale gas a key component of his "Pickens Plan" to turn gas into a transportation fuel.

"This is simply the most significant energy innovation so far this century," said Daniel Yergin, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the oil business, The Prize. "As recently as 2007, it was widely thought that natural gas was in tight supply and the U.S. was going to become a growing importer of gas. But this outlook has been turned on its head by the shale gale."

The shale boom's most enthusiastic boosters, major CEOs among them, even talk about the United States becoming energy independent, and even a net exporter of gas, though most find that concept far-fetched. Still, this is happening in a country that a few years ago started a building spree of terminals to import liquefied natural gas (LNG) because officials like former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan were warning of a dangerous decline in supplies.

In a report that called shale a "game changer" in the world of energy, Yergin's firm, IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates said the innovations that brought about shale gas make production less about exploring for new resources and more about lowering costs and finding efficiencies.

"The shale-gas production process has been described as akin to a manufacturing process in which a well is drilled into a known resource and natural gas is produced with little or no exploration risk," said the CERA report.

The "shale gale," as Yergin dubbed it, has also expanded the drilling boom far from Texas and the Rocky Mountains to places that haven't seen large-scale drilling since the days of Rockefeller's Standard Oil in the 1800s. An invasion of rigs is bringing jobs and investment to places like Arkansas, Pennsylvania, and New York State. Many of the hottest regions are rural, economically depressed areas with some of the highest unemployment rates in the nation. At the same time, the rapid pace of development has fueled fears about damage to the environment, in particular drinking-water contamination.

Pennsylvania sits in the middle of a sprawling formation called the Marcellus Shale, which stretches from West Virginia to New York State. Drilling is established in the commonwealth, but still considered to be in its early stages. The drilling boom has brought new life to businesses in small towns buffeted by the economic trends of recent decades. Shale gas boosters have started calling the economic effects "the Marcellus multiplier."