Short answers, pulled from the story.
Natural gas formed when layers of marine microorganisms transformed under oxygen-free conditions over millions of years. Intense heat and pressure thermally decomposed the decayed organisms to store energy as chemical bonds within methane molecules.
William Hart dug the first commercial natural gas well in Fredonia, New York in 1821. This venture led to the formation of the Fredonia Gas Light Company in 1858.
Russia holds the largest proven natural gas reserves at 47,600 cubic kilometers. Iran possesses slightly smaller reserves ranging from 33,100 to 33,800 cubic kilometers depending on the data source.
Methane accounts for an estimated thirty-three percent of anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming globally. A given quantity of methane has eighty-four times the global-warming potential of carbon dioxide over a twenty-year period.
Over one-third of households in the United States cook with natural gas using more than forty million homes. Stanford scientists estimated that gas stoves emit 0.8 to 1.3 percent of the gas they use as unburned methane.