A ponderous natural-gas reservoir, largely out of reach until now, could more than double the nation’s annual output – and it sits underneath practically all of West Virginia.
The gas floats in black shale, fine-grained sedimentary rock, about 5,000 feet below ground in a bed geologists call the Marcellus Shale formation. Though developers have long known about the Marcellus’ potential, they’ve left it mostly untapped because boring down so far proved too expensive.
But with gas prices staying high and new technology becoming more affordable, the Marcellus is suddenly ripe, and drillers all over the state are aiming at it.- Chris DorstSam Gunnoe attaches a new drill “string,” lengthening the bore on a Cabot Oil & Gas derrick in Jackson County. The rig will push down more than 5,000 feet, said manager Chad Shoffner (left), to the largely untapped Marcellus Shale gas formation.2 / 2Buy This Photo”The question is, who isn’t thinking about the Marcellus right now?” said Nicholas “Corky” DeMarco, director of the West Virginia Oil & Natural Gas Association trade group. “There are studies of the formation being done all over the state.”
According to research released earlier this year by Penn State University and the State University of New York at Fredonia, the Marcellus – which stretches over 54,000 square miles, from upstate New York into Southern West Virginia – could contain as much as 516 trillion cubic feet of gas, though only 50 trillion can be recovered today by existing technology.
By contrast, the nation now produces 30 trillion cubic feet per year, and that amount has been falling.
Tapping the Marcellus could enrich U.S. energy resources by as much as $1 trillion, the study’s authors estimated.
Similar black, or gas-rich, shale reservoirs at the Marcellus’ level have been tapped with spectacular results in Texas and Arkansas. Partly because of the success of prospecting pioneers there, Appalachian Basin drillers have been getting the resources they need to follow suit, said Philip Towey, exploration manager for Cabot Oil & Gas Corp.’s Eastern Region in Charleston.
“As a result of their success, everybody started looking in their back yard,” Towey said. The Appalachian Basin black shale “has the potential to be the single largest gas play in the country right now.”
Houston-based Cabot and West Virginia’s other biggest drillers – Dominion Resources Inc. of Richmond, Va., Equitable Resources Inc. of Pittsburgh and Chesapeake Energy Co. of Oklahoma City, along with a newer player, Houston’s PetroEdge Resources LLC – appear to be the most active in Marcellus exploration and drilling in West Virginia, DeMarco said.
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