Marcellus Shale - Gas Wells

By Matt Hughes mhughes@timesleader.com
Staff Writer   |   Matt Hughes on Facebook   |   @TLMattHughes on Twitter

Luzerne County has seen one natural resource boom come and go. It may not see another. 

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Sparing a temporary well cap and a few water containment tanks, Encana’s Salansky H1 well site in Lake Township has been stripped bare. Encana announced Thursday that it did not find commercial quantities of natural gas after performing a test, including hydraulic fracturing, at the well and that the company is leaving the state. At left, drilling specialists prepare for hydraulic fracturing at the site earlier this year.

BILL TARUTIS/For The Times Leader

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>> Terror research firm sues drilling activists. Page 6A

>> Foes of drilling thrilled by Encana’s decision. Page 6A

>> Cabot selling Pa. midstream to Williams. Page 9A

 

NEPA natural gas history

May 2008

Gas companies show interest in region’s gas deposits. Experts believe billions of dollars in gas is trapped in the Marcellus Shale. August 2008

The rush is on in western Wyoming County, with the Wyoming County Landowners’ Group and its more than 45,000 acres in the gas-filled Marcellus Shale region accepting a lease agreement with gas drilling companies.

December 2008

DEP adds a permit addendum for shale wells that requires accounting of water acquisition, consumption and disposal. Up to 4 million gallons of water might be used at a single gas well.

January 2009

State Department of Environmental Protection announces partnership with the drilling industry to address wastewater disposal.

March 2009

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection issues a letter of violation to Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. alleging faulty well casings caused natural gas to infiltrate into at least nine homes in Susquehanna County.

November 2009

• Encana natural gas announces it will drill two exploratory gas wells in Luzerne County.

• Fifteen property owners in Dimock Township, Susquehanna County, file a lawsuit against Cabot Oil and Gas, claiming it caused property damage, created health hazards and “hoodwinked” the residents into unfair contracts.

April 2010

Luzerne County Citizens for Clean Water is renamed the Gas Drilling Awareness Coalition. The group says it is charged with protecting communities and the environment from exploitative natural gas drilling.

June 2010

HBO airs Josh Fox’s movie, “Gasland,” portraying the dangers of drilling for natural gas. Fox owns property in Milanville, Wayne County.

July 2009

Encana begins drilling at its Buda H1 well site near Ricketts Glen State Park in Fairmont Township.

September 2010

Encana begins drilling at its Salansky H1 well site off Zosh Road in Lake Township.

October 2010

Lehman Township residents ask township supervisors to advertise and vote on an ordinance that effectively bans gas drilling in the township.

November 2010

• Pittsburgh’s City Council passes an ordinance banning gas drilling, the council becomes first in Pennsylvania to do so.

• Encana tests production at one of its wells and, eight days later, announces it will cease all operations in Luzerne County and Pennsylvania.

Encana Natural Gas, the only company to drill a Marcellus Shale gas well in Luzerne County, announced Thursday that it is ceasing operations in the county and Pennsylvania. With the exception of some activity on its borders, the departure of Encana from the Back Mountain may signal the end of natural gas drilling in Luzerne County in the foreseeable future.

“Not all shale is created equal,” Penn State geoscientist Dr. Michael A. Arthur told reporters at a Marcellus Shale conference in Williamsport Wednesday. “There’s a feeling that gas is where you find it, and that anywhere you drill in the Marcellus the yield is the same, but that might not be true.”

Missed the mark

Though the entire county sits atop the Marcellus Shale, it lies near the southwestern edge of a smaller zone, in which scientists and natural gas drillers have predicted drilling to be economically worthwhile. Encana drilled its exploratory wells in Lake and Fairmont townships, near that median.

“Over time, we’ve seen the industry trying to define where the limits of where the Marcellus play are,” said Dave Messersmith, an educator with Penn State University Cooperative Extension and a member of Penn State’s Marcellus Education Team.

“So we have a basic understanding of the geology, but in many cases, it really takes some exploratory wells to really understand what the potential is,” he said.

Messersmith said he expects to see companies drill more exploratory wells to define the edges of the economically viable shale play in Northeastern Pennsylvania generally.

“It’s a highly speculative business, especially in the early stages of a play’s development,” Messersmith said, adding that cases like Encana’s are “pretty common within the industry. We haven’t seen a lot of that happen in Pennsylvania, but obviously, as the years pass, we will see industry continue to look at the edges of the play.”

Encana’s experience offers a good indication that the shale’s pay zone lies beyond the county, Wilkes University Geology and Chemistry Professor Brian Redmond said.

“The prospects of finding a large quantity of natural gas in Luzerne County probably plummeted as a result of Encana,” Redmond said. “It was worth the shot; it just apparently didn’t pay off.”

Redmond said the decision of gas companies to drill in an area is dependent on two factors: “the quantity of gas that’s there,” and “how much pain do you have to go through to get to it.”

Encana didn’t have to tackle the second question, he said, because the company found there wasn’t enough gas below its exploratory wells in Lake and Fairmont townships to keep the company in the area.

Too hot, too deep

Ironically, the formation of anthracite coal, the natural resource that fueled the growth of the county in the 19th and early 20th centuries, also destroyed most commercially viable quantities of natural gas beneath the valley, Redmond said.

Redmond said that the collision of two continents hundreds of millions of years ago created the ancient Appalachian Mountains and, in Northeastern Pennsylvania, converted bituminous coal into anthracite. That process created tremendous heat and pressure, he said.

“The Marcellus Shale is organic rich, and so, as a result of heat and compression, much of the organic matter would have been converted into methane gas,” Redmond said. “The problem is, you can overdo it. If you heat and compress the gas too much, the same process that creates it can also drive it out.”

The folding of land that created the valley also contributed to gas escaping, Redmond said.

“As you fold the rock, you also fracture the rock, and that would allow the gas to escape,” he said.

Beneath the Wyoming Valley, conventional knowledge dictates that the temperatures and pressure was too intense for gas to survive, Redmond said. To the west of the Susquehanna River, the shale begins to dive much more deeply below the earth’s surface, making drilling less economical. Encana, Redmond said, perhaps taking into account historical reports of pockets of methane discovered in area coal mines, hoped to plant its straw in the edge of the gas-rich Marcellus.

Gone for good?

Now that Encana has turned up empty, however, Redmond said it is unlikely the county will see further drilling activity in the near future, except, perhaps, on it borders.

“If you can’t find sufficient quantities where they were, it would not make sense to come closer to the valley,” Redmond said. “It gets even deeper.”

The Marcellus Shale lies between 5,000 and 6,000 feet beneath Encana’s test wells, Redmond said, but further west, it gets much deeper. The same processes that “cooked” the gas in the area would have had the same effect on other shales as well, including the deeper Utica Shale.“If the price of natural gas skyrockets, then people might be interested in the deeper gas, and as the technology improves and it becomes cheaper to drill,” Redmond said. “I doubt there’s much interest in that now because there are other easier places to look.”