mineral rights

Farmers in Kansas are hitting the jackpot. But instead of holding the winning lottery numbers, it's all about owning the right piece of land -- land with oil beneath it.

Please pardon my poor punning, and let me explain: "Fraccing" (rhymes with "cracking") is the oil and natural gas industry's an informal contraction for the technology called hydraulic fracturing, in which water (and in some cases, a chemical mixture) is pumped deep underground to fracture shale...