Vox: Wyoming's mining sector has seen a large boom in the past decade, particularly as US coal production continues to shift from Appalachia to Wyoming's Powder River Basin. Advanced fracking and horizontal drilling techniques have also allowed companies to extract oil and gas from the Niobara formation.
Alaska is the one big state bucking the trend -- whereas lots of other energy states have seen a boom in fossil-fuel production due to fracking, Alaska's mining industry actually declined last year....