DRILLING QUIETLY GOING ON

54000 sq mi is the total reservoir field area for the Marcellus shale. Approximately 9000 sq mi is in Pennsylvania alone. So the total field estimate for natural gas (assuming that all is the same in other states) is about 2 quadrillion cubic feet. Using about 500 billion cubic feet per year gives a rough field life of about 1000 years. I know Im doing something wrong by doing the math in my addled head. But even if Im 100% off, the field has a life of at least 500 years (Ill assume that because many power plants are switching to Nat gas dfuels)

I can see me switching to a nat gas vehicle, the only problem is the damn tank. I suppose that shaped tanks will be designed for cars using Nat Gas.

Now, the issue of putting the mercaptans in the gas so we can smell itr without gassing ourselves to death


Good to have some solutions rather than just bringing bad news all the time.

It would look pretty dumb to have a gas grill tank on the back of your Vette.

Fit him like a glove then.

The size of the "Marcellus play" is now up to about 75000 square miles, and the state of Pa and WVa have been running lease auctions for state park and game lands because the environmnetal pressures are going to have to be demonstarted before unlimited drilling is allowed. This approach is realsitic since the "NIMBY" politicians are mostly being holdouts in the national bans because of some real or percieved environmental effects. Nobody cab project that such damage will or willn not occur until at least some test holing is done. Remember that all this gas exploration on the MArcellus is (as of this point) a pure gamble, with about a 60% chance that the gas plays predicted , are actually rel. The entire success depends upon the success of pneumo and hydro "fracking" of the shales. Fracking is very host rock specific and many times the incipient rock fabric can be totally misaligned with the frac patterns and gases could migrate outside a capture zone making the need for several slant holes needed to accomplish one extraction zone.

Its a high tech Las Vegas night that is based totally upon the success that was realized in the Texas Barnett basin. However, the Appalachians is no layer cake rock structure. All the pre Triassic formations have been severely folded and jointed in several series of mountain building that includes at leat two majors in post Marcellus time.
Guys are willing to bet billions to make tens of billions, or else they could lose it big time. Stay tuned ,
If you have little stomach for risk, dont invest at all. But if you like to sweat over your investments , itcould be interesting.

newest field reports involve drilling in the Utica SHale of New York through New Brunswick and Quebec all the way to the GAspe Peninsula. The rigs of Forest City Inc , are beginning to show up for test drilling and exploration. These wells take about 3 to 5 months to complete and, from initial reports, the entire field could produce a whopping 60 to 70 trillion cubic feet. AT 12 bucks a C-ft thats a lot of money involved in these plays.

Gas stocks have risen sharply since the new technology has shown production in heretorfore "source rock" areas like
The BArnett SHale
MArcellus SHale
Haynseville SHale

etc.

The Utica is just one more shale play in the circumferential Appalachian basin. The shales of the southern Appalachian basin are yet to be looked at seriously.
With this quiet exploration and production being done, it appears that gas may be projected to a longer term call of about 8 to 10 bucks a c ft. Not bad , and a more reasonable consumer value than the higher prices when no drilling was going on.

well, I visited a drill site being set up in the Utica of Quebec and was surprised at the newly manufactured equipment thats now a standard bag-o-tricks for gas development. They use large pressurized delivery systems to blow water into the rock at extremely high pressures. This cracks up , or "fracs" the shale along its natural planes of fissility and releases the gas into the stem. The drillers are using a lot of slant drilling technology and this is also using some very new equipment that locates the drill bit underground within a few cm of its target areas. It all uses highly accurate GPS and acoustic sensors that shift the drill bit along a 3 d plane of attack. The drill bits are shifted by moving the center of mass around sort of like the flaps on a plane wing.

SO far theres been some moderate success in the shallow Utica, their targets are in the deeper shale.

Was it quiet fm? That's we need to know. If drilling is quietly going on it needs to be quiet.

Are you straying off topic to preen again.

Drilling Update, Sept 30, 2008--

Drilling leases have been extended to several "second tier" exploration service companies for possible drilling in the New Jersey and Pennsylvania sreas that are underlain by a large "Triassic Sediment Basin". This basin, collectively known as the "Newark/Gettysburg/Culpepper Basin" Extends from roughly, Nova Scotia to Georgia. Within this basin are several sections that scientists believe were formed in ancient lakes, some of which were as big as the present Great LAkes.
The Newark Basin is lately being re-analyzed for its potential to serve as a source of natural gas that is believed to be locked up in shale deposits similar to the Marcellus Shale, now being test drilled in New York, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. These potential gas fields are the reason for a new minerals land boom in these respective states. These land booms are causing confusion in the real estate markets since many land-owners , already in the risky land development market, may suddenly wish to retain their properties and sell their mineral rights (and collect royalties from future gas development) to the exploration companies rather than home builders.

fm :

when we took a one week cruise from montreal to boston in may , i picked up some of the small local newspapers along the way .
every paper reported on the ongoing drilling activities along the lower st. lawrence river and other areas of the maritimes .
i understand that much of the activity is "preliminary drilling" and "mapping operations" - but there definetely seems to be a lot of activity .

less than 100 km north of here (north of lake ontario) , a company wants to explore for uranium , but they'll have to reach an agreement with the algonquins first - they apparently have the rights to the lands given them by the "crown" some 200 years ago - lawyers are making big money on the dispute ! .
hbg

farmerman :

just wanted to post a link to the UTICA and MARCELLUS shale fields .
might be of some interest to you .
hbg

http://oilshalegas.com/uticashale.html

Now Ive herd that the Vintage and Kinzers Formations, and the Cococheague Formations are being looked at for gas production. (My farm lies on the Kinzers and Vintage). Lessee, two times buzz a zbuzza ...(carry the two). WOW.

Hamburger. I get the EXPLORER, Heres a sample of their ON-Line propoganda about the MArcellus. (With a map of the entire play)http://www.aapg.org/explorer/2008/03mar/marcellus.cfm

Oh--I see now.

I've just seen a US shopkeeper who is closing up. He said his customers had no money. I wouldn't pack your day job in just yet fm.

thanks , farmerman !
i really don't know anything about drilling . i just found it quite interesting that in the quebec and the maritimes the local papers were all abuzz with the shale-find news .
i don't think i saw anything about it in our local newspaper .
since the lower st. lawrence area is quite desolate(really quite poor too) , any exploration/drilling activity would probably welcome news for the local economy .
flying in from europe , one sees not much more than rocks and sparse forests with some lakes along the lower st. lawrence and labrador .
flying out at night , one can usually see the lights of the settlement at shefferville (iron ore mines) or the lower churchill falls hydro stations .
canada certainly is a land of a lot of rocks !
hbg

Drilling in the Utica shale can extend all the way out to Gaspe and then over to the Northern end of the Bay. Also, The Triassic extends all the way through Nova Scotia.

Im thinking that another, still untested shale unit is the Ordovician sequence that extends across New Brunswick, Nova SCotia, and Newfoundland.

Initial results are in. 26% of the drill sites are showing developable gas . Thats not as great a find as they were initially hoping but its still enough for a year supply (remember there are other gas fields being looked at also, with the Utica/Triassic/Black River/trenton fields all in our NE area alone

The hit rate has been increased to 29% of all drillholes yielding marketeable gas. The new gas finds from Texas to La toTenn, Ky Oh,W Va,Va, Pa, NY,and into Canada have shown so much gas that the need for FOREIGN SOurced LNG has been greatly decreased. A number of the proposed LNG projects are under scrutiny and several are actually being cancelled. This is the first good sign that we really can break our umbilical to foreign energy. In Maine alone were at least 5 separate LNG facilities in Washington County. Three of these have tanked because the economics have dictated that we can be "Gas independent" for the next half century.

All this was done separate from the "drill here drill now" douche bags. The gas fields had been under study for 25 years and the new tech developments of slant and crack drilling has matured into a nice means of exploration. AS they begin drilling in foreign countries, I see that the price of gas will not only stabilize even more than it has recently, Its gonna drop nicely.

Do you know what type of fracturing fluid is used in PA? I read that benzene and other contaminants have been found in well water in CO and other states but don't know if the same stuff is used here.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_47/b4109000334640.htm
(OK, how do we do links in the new format?)
I've often noticed parallel cracks in sedimentary rocks in stream beds around here. I didn't note their orientation but perhaps they are the Marcellus shale J1 joints described in the AAPG article. Any idea why they are so straight instead of jagged?

Most all fracturing fluid is just water , and in some cases they add a bit of "heft" by adding GUAR GUM. This is a veggie based material that is more like soybean gum.

You are in ALaska no? . The MArcellus is an Appalachian Formation name. So Im not sure where you are referring to. There are MArcellus equivalents all ov er (lower to mid Marine Devonian), The mapping of Tiktaliik was based on a p[re-drift location of Non marine Devonian units that were originally joined but now are separated into Canadian/Newfoundlandian? Icelandic and /Northwestern Appalachian units.

The joint patterns Of tghe MArcellus in the NE Appalachians are at a set series of angles away from the major deformation sequences. In our case, the major joint sets are NE-SW by about 95 degrees off true N. Then there are a series of "imbricate" joints (repeated but at different angles) These continue off the main joint sets at about 30 degree increments. Joints are usually straight for their pattern and there are several different sets that repeat the rock mineral trends, bedding, dip of bedding etc. Usually when we map these things , we plot them on circular plots called Stereo nets. and the point of the dip/ strike and trend of the joints, faults, cleavage etc are plotted as dots on the stereo net. Then we usually contour them to understand the local trend. Regional trends are mapped as we lay out several hundred of these stereo nets on a digital ploter and overlay them on a map. We can see that all these fractures vary with distance and form at the point of tghe least stress that the rock has been subject to.

When you mentioned an AAPG article, which one did you refer to? maybe I have it here and can see the joint sets that you were speaking of.

I am in western Pennsylvania. A co-worker is planning to lease her property to a company interested in drilling for gas and the Marcellus formation is specified in the lease.

I will have to look closer at the cracks in local rocks but I didn't notice any obvious displacement. Seems that if there were enough stress to crack them it would also have caused some kind of slippage.

The stereo nets sound interesting. Are any accessible to the general public?

The AAPG article I read was the one you posted a link to earlier in this thread.