Getting at the gas below

Three years ago, hundreds of Luzerne County landowners were offered $300 per acre for the right to drill for natural gas on their land.

Since then, area residents have seen lease offer bonuses soar to more than 10 times that amount and potentially lucrative royalty offers ranging from 12.5 to 20 percent thrown in to sweeten the deal. They’ve heard tales of folks in northern tier counties once struggling with high unemployment now reaping the benefits of instant wealth.

But they’ve also seen reports of natural gas well explosions and blowouts in Pennsylvania that have injured or killed people and harmed the environment, the contamination of well water supplies a few counties to the north and nearly 1,500 environmental violations by well drillers across the state in the last 30 months.

All of these phenomena have been directly or indirectly attributed to one thing – development of the Marcellus Shale.

The Marcellus Shale is a formation of dense rock about a mile beneath the earth’s surface, stretching from West Virginia to New York, with a portion lying beneath about two-thirds of Luzerne County.

Technology started in 1990s

Scientists have known for decades about the shale, which is rich in natural gas that is released when the rock is fractured. But it was too costly to extract the gas using older technology.

Then, in the late 1990s, Texas oilman George Mitchell perfected the use of hydraulic fracturing – perforating the shale with small underground detonations to break up the shale and flush out the gas under high pressure with a new mixture of water, sand and chemicals.

Devon Energy bought Mitchell’s company in 2002 and combined hydraulic fracturing with horizontal drilling to make the process even more cost effective, and natural gas from the Barnett Shale formation in Texas was successfully produced.

Exploration and development companies soon saw the same potential for the Marcellus formation and began visiting landowners in Pennsylvania. The first well was drilled in Western Pennsylvania’s Washington County in 2004, and Marcellus development spread northeast.

The first natural gas lease recorded in Luzerne County was with Chesapeake Appalachia for 272 acres in Fairmount Township; it was signed in May 2008. A few months later, Citrus Energy recorded another 32 leases for Lake Township properties totaling more than 800 acres.

Whitney Marvin, president of WhitMar Exploration, said his landmen began visiting Luzerne County landowners with lease offers in 2007. WhitMar partnered with Encana Oil & Gas (USA), selling the leases to Encana while retaining an interest, and Encana began drilling the first natural gas well in the county last month in Fairmount Township on what is known as the Buda site.

Drilling basics are well set

While timeframes, types of equipment and techniques can vary depending on the energy company, the land conditions and requirements the landowners place in the leases, the basics of drilling a natural gas well are fairly consistent.

After all necessary state and local permits are secured and plans to deal with noise, light, dust, traffic and emergency situations are developed and filed, the energy company begins building a level well pad, which could take two to eight weeks.

The work involves hundreds of truck trips to haul away cut timber and bring in equipment and stone for the pad – for the Buda site Encana regulatory adviser Brenda Linster estimated about 300 trucks would be required.

Plans call for drilling four horizontal wells to a depth of 10,500 feet to 13,500 feet and a vertical well to a depth of 6,500 to 8,000 feet. A closed-loop system in which shakers remove rock cuttings from the drilling mud so it can be re-used would be employed, Linster said at a recent meeting.

It would take another 300 truck trips to bring in and remove the drilling rig and haul in equipment, casing and drill pipe.

Fracturing next major step

For the next step of the gas extraction process – hydraulic fracturing, or fracking – a completions rig, steel tanks to hold fresh and frack water, a command center, pump trucks and mixers are brought to the site. About 6 million gallons of water would be used to frack each horizontal well and about 1 million gallons to frack a vertical well.

About 6,800 truck trips would be necessary to haul in fracking equipment and fresh water and to haul to a treatment facility the approximately 12 percent of fracking water that returns to the surface.

The timeframe for fracking would be dependent on availability of frack crews and water from sources approved by the Susquehanna River Basin Commission, Linster said.

Once drilling and fracking were completed, a permanent wellhead would be installed along with metering equipment and tanks for flowback water and condensate. Fracking equipment would be removed from the site after the well is producing gas. All but about two acres of a well pad would be reclaimed to its original contour and re-vegetated.

Industry estimates say wells can produce for 20-30 years, during which little or no disruption of the environment is necessary.

Some are raising concerns

Many residents are worried about increased truck traffic causing safety problems and the time it might take for a trained crew to arrive on-scene for a catastrophic event because local emergency responders aren’t trained for anything but logistical support and evacuation if such an event were to occur.

The fracking process also has many residents worried and question industry claims that there has never been a single confirmed case in which fracking contaminated a water supply. They’re also worried about a chemical spill into a local drinking water supply.

Folks such as Dr. Tom Jiunta, a Lehman Township podiatrist, believe Pennsylvania should put a moratorium on natural gas drilling until stricter laws and regulations can be put in place and a study is completed to determine whether or not there should be federal oversight of fracking activities as related to keeping water supplies safe.

Others believe that Encana has a stellar reputation and that drilling and fracking – if done properly – are safe.

Supporters point to the economic boom and boost in local employment that Marcellus Shale drilling promises, along with a decrease in the carbon emissions and a dependence on foreign oil. Natural gas burns 50 percent cleaner than coal, industry officials say.