By Meghan Gordon on April 14, 2010 5:16 PM

If you've read anything about natural gas in the last year, chances are pretty good that you've seen this map.

Its pink and purple blotches represent the shale basins that sprawl across the country, from the Rockies clear across to the Appalachians.

Jim Duncan of ConocoPhillips Gas & Power seemed to apologize to gas buyers this week for contributing to the map's over-exposure. But he projected it on the conference room's big screens anyway. "I honestly think you could solve the national debt if we had some sort of royalty on using this map," Duncan said during the LDC Gas Forum in Atlanta.

The map and the larger story of shale has become an inescapable topic at any gathering of energy wonks, natural gas ones or otherwise.

Duncan, director of market analysis for the ConocoPhillips division, told the gas buyers that we're still in the very beginning of the "shale gale." Annual reports as recent as 2004 didn't even mention the resource, he said. Of course, now you don't have to read company literature to know about shale.

"There are places in Pennsylvania that look like old Oklahoma oil towns, with drill pipes as far as you can see," Duncan said.

Adam Sieminski, chief energy economist for Deutsche Bank, told the same group that he recently asked a plugged-in Barnett Shale independent producer when he had his "aha moment" about shale. The producer didn't understand the Oprah-esque term.

"When did you realize this was way bigger?" Sieminski asked him. "The answer, surprisingly, was the end of 2008. This is somebody who knew what was going on. That's less than two years ago."

No doubt the popular Energy Information Administration map will get a lot more play.