Archive for the ‘Marcellus Shale’ Category

The need for Marcellus shale fracking is real if the trapped natural gas and oil deposits are to be extracted for use by the American consumer. This deposit has been known for over a century, but it was not economically feasible to extract the energy reserves while there were easier sources to tap.

The process of fracking has been in use on wells for over 100 years. The difference from the past is that the fracking process was used to revitalize a well after the main portion of the oil or natural gas was already collected. The hydrofracking of a well that was near empty was to flush the remaining portion of the trapped energy to the surface.

In the Marcellus shale rock region, the fracking process is used at the beginning of the extraction process. The reason this more expensive extraction of energy is now being preformed is because the known easy to get at reserves of oil and nature gas are almost depleted.

The energy companies of the world now have to find energy reserves in places that are more expensive to extract the oil and natural gas to meet the every growing demand of the global community. For US domestic deposits, the Marcellus shale rock deposit is the largest known energy reserve that has yet to be tapped to its fullest potential.

Because the natural gas and oil is in the pores of the shale rock in the Marcellus region, the hydrofracking procedure along with vertical drilling of the wells must be done at the beginning of the process of extracting the energy. This is vastly more expensive and time consuming than just drilling a well and having the energy reserve rush to the surface. This is what typically occurred in the past, but is rarely experienced today.

Without the fracking process being done to recover the natural gas and oil reserves in the Marcellus shale rock formation, the energy trapped underground would remain there. This would put an even larger degree of separation from the demands for these products and the supply of them. Since price is dictated by the supply of a product verses the demand for it, prices of natural gas and oil will rise significantly without the reserves from the Marcellus region being obtained.

The Marcellus shale rock deposit is not the only one of its kind in the US or the world, but it is the largest in North America. The use of fracking and vertical drilling has been developed significantly so a higher level of efficiency and safety has been achieved in these processes in just the last few years.

With Marcellus shale fracking, more natural gas and oil will be available for the American consumer at a low cost. One fact to consider in whether this is a good thing or not is the demand for these products are not going to decline any time soon.

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Image via Wikipedia

The Marcellus gas pocket is the largest shale rock formation in North America. This formation is the sediment left over after the Devonian period 400 million years ago when the Appalachian basin was a seabed. This is when the sediment layer was placed there that has developed into the limestone and shale rock formation left over from the fossil remains of animals and the plant that that lived in the oxygen deprived waters.

Officially this region has been given to names of the Marcellus shale region and the Devonian shale region. The latter of the two is on the western edge of the deposit. These shale rock deposits reach as far north as under Great Lake Erie and to the south as far as Mississippi. To the east it can be found in New York down the east coast to Virginia and to the west in the states of Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.

The largest deposit of this trapped oil and natural gas is in the state of Pennsylvania, but almost the entire state of West Virginia is also a prime place for the extraction of these needed energy reserves. To gauge the vastness of the natural gas exploration that is currently going on in Pennsylvania, there are 8280 permitted wells exploring for natural gas in the month of October, 2011.

To extract this trapped natural gas and oil from the shale rock bed, the use of hydrofracking is required. This is because the energy reserves as encapsulated in the rock bed and not in an open reservoir as many of the easy to extract sources in the past that have already been tapped were found.

To make the most out of each well and the hydrofracking procedure, the process of horizontal drilling is now being used. This allows for a greater area of the shale rock bed to be directly exposed to the pressure of the fracking process. By proceeding in this manner, more of the shale rock bed can be fractured releasing a larger amount of trapped oil and natural gas for extraction at each well.

With the wells that have hit natural gas, this creates a larger gas pocket under the ground for a quicker recovery of this needed energy supply. This reduces the number of wells needed in the area to extract the maximum amount of the trapped energy at a lower cost.

The Marcellus gas pocket created by each of the hydrofracking procedures being done is part of the largest source of domestic natural gas production in existence today. Without this energy reserve being exploited, the cost of natural gas to the American consumer would increase dramatically.

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Marcellus Shale Gas Fracking

The Marcellus Shale Gas Fracking process is necessary so this energy reservoir can be recovered for the American consumer to use. This is due to the natural gas being trapped in the pores of the shale rock below the surface.

The Marcellus shale rock energy deposit has been known for over 100 years. The reason the natural gas and oil have not been recovered before now is because the technology to make the extraction economically feasible has not been available until lately.

Shale Gas Fracking with Horizontal Drilling

The development of both horizontal drilling and an improved hydrofracking processes have made the extraction of natural gas and oil reserves can now be done in an economical manner. The horizontal drilling is now possible because of the flexible natural of the new style of drilling apparatus. This allows for the well to be drilled down to the shale rock layer in a vertical manner.

Once the well bore is at the shale rock layer, the drilling angle is moved to being horizontally. This allows for a greater area of the shale rock layer to be exposed to the well bore. Because of this fact, the hydrofracking process can then penetrate an increased area in the shale rock layer which allows for more of the fracking slurry to be pumped into the well bore.

With an increased in the amount of frac sand in the slurry mixture because a larger amount can be pumped into the well bore since it is larger, a greater amount of natural gas and oil can then be released with each hydrofracking procedure.

With this new combination in the recovery of natural gas and oil recover by the energy companies has made it possible to reduce the number of wells that will need to be drilled at the surface in the Marcellus shale rock basin.

Marcellus Region Shale Gas Fracking

With fewer wells needing to be drilled for the recovery of the natural gas and oil that is trapped in the Marcellus region, the cost of recovering this trapped energy is significantly reduced. This allows for a greater amount of natural gas and oil to be available to the American consumer at a lower cost. This is one of the contributions the recovery of the natural gas in the Marcellus region has a positive impact on the US economy.

The Marcellus shale gas fracking is just one of the many ways the energy companies are providing the every increased supply of natural gas and oil that the American public are demanding.

3D Drilling Rig-John Perez Graphics & Design

How do basic oil and gas operations work? Companies looking for oil and natural gas use a drilling rig to drill their oil well or natural gas well. This animation reviews the various steps in oil and natural gas recovery, from drilling to completion….

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image via wikipedia

More on Marcellus Shale Drilling

The Marcellus shale drilling sites across the northeastern portion of the nation are recovering energy deposits that are 400 million years old. This was when this area of land was a sea bed that was void of oxygen that formed the now present energy reserves.

The layers of the shale rock that is being penetrated in this region are between 2,000 and 9,000 feet deep. The natural gas and oil deposits in this shale rock bed are trapped in the pores and layers of the rock. To recover enough of the energy reserve to make the drilling process worth exploring the use of hydrofracking must be used.

Hydrofracking is a process in which a slurry is pumped into the well at extremely high pressure. This will cause the pores and layers to fracture which leads the oil and natural gas being released.

Marcellus Shale Drilling and Fracking

The 99.5% of the slurry is made up of a combination of water and frac sand. The remainder includes acids and surfactants to help get the energy reserves out of the ground in an efficient manner. To help prevent the fracking from occurring in any layer of rock between the surface and the shale rock layer, the well bore is lined with a reinforcement.

To help this process even further the old way of drilling a well has been modified. With easily to extract energy reserves from the ground, a vertical shaft has been drilled in the past. This was a straight shot down on top of the reserve. The trapped oil and natural gas would then flow up so it could be recovered for the American consumer to use.

To maximize the area in the fracking process, not only does the well bore have to be vertical, but also horizontal once it reaches the shale rock bed layer. This way the well bore’s surface area under the ground is maximized for a better result when the hydrofracking process is initiated. This allows for a greater amount of the trapped oil and natural gas to be recovered from each well that is drilled from the Marcellus shale rock deposit.

The amount of the shale rock bed that is crushed by the hydrofracking process is limited, so a number of wells have to be drilled to extract all the possible trapped energy reserves from the region. This is why so many wells are being used to recover this valuable energy reserve.

Marcellus Shale Drilling Region

The use of Marcellus shale drilling in this region is the best way for the domestic energy supply to be generated for the American consumer. This is the largest deposit of its kind in North America and will help our country to be more independent from the foreign sources of oil and natural gas for the foreseeable future.

Natural gas drilling is now a high tech operation as witnessed by this video describing the way to determine the gas reserve in an area.

Calculating accurate unconventional reserve areas

Example showing the use of Team-GIS software to calculate areas of coal bed methane reserves based on well results. Email gas@exprodat.com for further information about using GIS to plan unconventional gas projects.

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image via wikipedia

Natural Gas from Marcellus Shale

The Marcellus Shale Natural Gas estimated reserve has been reduced from 262 trillion cubic feet of gas in 2009 to 84 trillion cubic feet of gas this year from the Energy Information Agency of America. What the American consumer needs to realize is that this is just an estimate and not a hard fact.

The hard facts of this massive shale oil and natural gas deposit are that it covers an area from the Great Lakes to the north of New York all the way down the Appalachian Mountains to Alabama. The exact amount of trapped energy reserves that is recoverable will never really be known.

This layer of shale rock is on average 2000 to 9000 feet deep. This is well below the water tables in nearly every region it is located in. There is also enough in the smallest amount that has been estimated for the natural gas deposit to be present to supply every home in America with this domestic energy source for 4 years. The upper end is 100 years.

Marcellus Shale Economy

The economic boom in this region of the country is a welcome boost to the working class people that live there. The jobs will come from supplying the raw materials for the wells. This will include the frac sand for the hydrofracking of the wells. These jobs will be on the rail lines transporting the material along with the transloading stations that will place the material on the tractor trailers and the drivers that will haul the cargo to its final destination. All of those jobs do not even include the well teams that will be necessary.

All of these workers will also need to eat, places to stay and supplies of their own. The communities that embrace this domestic energy reserve can finds themselves out of the recession faster than those that are protesting the projects.

The major oil and gas producers are starting to build the processing plants that are necessary to handle this vast amount of energy when it is recovered. For those communities that no not desire to be a part of it just might find themselves bypassed.

Hydrofracking in Marcellus Shale

The concern over the drinking water has only been drummed up by those that are not looking at the facts. Hydrofracking has been in use for both energy well and drinking water wells for over 100 years. It is a safe and the only process that can break the shale rock formation so the natural gas and oil can be recovered.

The Marcellus Shale Natural Gas reserve is a boom for the regional economies and the best domestic natural energy resource available today. There is no substitute, even the electric cars need energy that is created by natural gas.

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Where Marcellus Shale was Discovered in 1839

The need for Natural Gas Fracking in the Marcellus Shale Rock region cannot be understated. Without the shale rock being crushed or cracked, the natural gas reserves cannot be released and then harvested at the surface by the energy industry.

All known easy to reach reserves of natural gas and oil reserves have already been found and are being tapped to supply the demands of consumers and industry. Unfortunately the demand for this energy is greater than what these reserves have to offer.

The Marcellus Shale rock deposit was formed over 400 million years ago. It was not discovered until about 1839 when James Hall named it for the town in New York were it broke thru the surface. Since that time, the trapped oil and natural gas reserves have been left alone while the easier to obtain reserves were exploited for consumption by consumer and industry alike.

The means to extract the reserves for the Marcellus shale rock layer has been in use for over 100 years. Because of the added expense of drilling horizontally and then hydrofracking the well, the reserves have been left untouched until lately.

The harvesting of the Marcellus shale rock region’s reserves has occurred because the need for an increase in sources from which natural gas and oil can be extracted from is in an increasing demand. Another contributing factor is that the easy to harvest reserves of natural gas and oil hare no longer producing enough to meet the worlds and America’s needs.

The process of hydrofracking to break up the shale rock layers of the Marcellus shale region involves a slurry mixture of water and sand. This constitutes 99.5% to 99.95% of the slurry. The remaining chemicals are added to aid in the break up and dissolving of the rock layers to make extraction of the energy reserves easier. These extra chemicals are mainly VOCs and acids.

This slurry is pumped into the bore head of the well under extreme pressure to break apart the shale rock so the trapped energy reserves it holds can be collected at the surface. Without this hydrofracking process, the trapped natural gas and oil would remain unattainable for use by consumer and industry.

Unless new and easier to obtain natural gas and oil reserves are found, which is not expected, or the demand for this energy is decreased, the process of natural gas fracking is necessary to meet the demands of the modern economy of America. The alternative is higher prices with a diminishing supply of natural gas for all.

Marcellus Shale Fracking will be in the news for a long time to come as various state and local governments work out the safest and best methods to perform this type of drilling.

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The process of Marcellus Shale Fracking for the trapped shale natural gas and oil reserves that are up to 9000 feet below the surface are still in the news. The source of most of the problems between the local communities and the energy industry is what is to be done with the waste water that is used in the fracking process.

What most do not realize is that over 99.5% of this waste water is only water and sand. The remaining chemicals are acids and VOC that are of the major concern by the uninformed. VOC stands for volatile organic compound which by its nature will evaporate at room temperature. This occurs on a regular basis while the waste water is sitting in the collection ponds waiting for treatment.

The acids in the water are small in proportion to the overall volume of the water but can still be easily adjusted as all water is done at a water treatment facility. This is a common practice in all the drinking water that is available today across the nation.

Unfortunately because of the misconception of the danger this waste water poses, a moratorium has been placed on the wells over the Marcellus Shale deposit in some places.  This has hit the local economy hard with the laying off of all the workers associated with the drilling process. The number of wells is over 1,800 at this time, each with a crew and mechanism for supplies including the transloading stations.

What really needs to get out is that hydrofracking has been used for over 100 years in all areas of this country and the world to help extract the maximum amount of energy reserves for existing wells. The statements that are being made that this is a new technique are totally false and misleading.

While many Americans do not believe what big businesses say anymore or trust the US government to protect their rights is somewhat warranted. The leading problem is the moratorium is put in place over fear and not facts. While there have been a few problems, the massive majority of the wells that have been hydrofracked, over 99.999%, have had no problems associated with them.

The Marcellus Shale Fracking processes are the best and least expensive chance America has at supplying the needs of the domestic consumer with the energy they are still demanding. The alternative is importing our energy at a higher cost and then being dependent on the foreign source for our future needs.

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The use of Marcellus Shale Fracking to release the trapped oil and natural gas reserves from the shale rock formation is the greatest resource America has that can reduce or end our need on foreign oil imports.

Unfortunately there have been some misunderstandings about the fracking process and its effect on the area below the surface that is affected. Some misinformed people are spreading the word that fracking jeopardizes the safety of ground water. This has occurred once in the history of fracking and it occurred in a shallow well.

What the skeptics forget to inform the public is that hydrofracking has been used on nearly every well in America since 1946. From 1950 forward there have been over 2.6 millions wells drilled in America in which nearly 85% have used hydrofracking safely to extract this needed energy reserve.

What most opponents of fracking do not release is that the Marcellus shale deposit is mostly 3000 to 9000 feet below the ground. The natural water aquifers that are used for drinking water range in depth from 20 feet for personal wells to municipal wells that can reach up to 1000 feet in a few instances.

Between the Marcellus shale deposits that contains the trapped oil and natural gas and the nearest water aquifer are several thousands of feet that include several solid rock layers. These layers of rock are more solid in nature and what most consider rock. Shale rock is more brittle and crumbles at a significantly reduced amount of pressure than does granite or most other types of rock that make up the layers between the shale rock and the water aquifers.

The shale rock fracks easier because of the energy reserve that is trapped within it pores that are like little hollow tubes that weaken the rock. Granite and other rocks do not have these pores and are not affected by the hydrofracking process.

This is the fundamental reason why in over 60 years of hydrofracking oil and natural gas wells there has only been one reported incident of ground water contamination with slurry that was 99.5% water and sand and trace amounts of surfactants that can be found in the typical home.

The Marcellus shale fracking is a safe and efficient means of extracting the needed energy reserves that are being demanded by the American public. The alternative is to rely on the Middle East for our energy needs despite the constant instability of that region in the world.

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The Marcellus shale drilling has been going on for nearly a decade now with a positive recovery of natural gas and oil. These energy reserves are helping, in part, to supply the American public with its high demand of fuel needs that are being used to help generate revenue streams for the area.

The positive economic impact of the wells that are tapping into this energy deposit is larger than most realize. This includes all the supplies that are needed to extract the natural gas and oil. The only raw material that can be found locally is water. All of the rest have to be brought in from other parts of the country.

The list of raw materials needed to recover the energy reserves is vast. This includes all the piping, machinery, frac sand, and containers, along with the means in which to transport all of the supplies.

In America, the transportation system is already established that makes this moving of large and bulk items essentially easy.  This includes the vast fleets of tractor trailers and the roads that they use to transport the goods to their final destination. The railroads are another part of this all important transportation system that is widely used.

The railroads are how the large and bulk items are transported close to their final destination. They arrive at the transloading station where the material is offloaded to waiting tractor trailers for the final part of the journey. These transloading stations are strategically positioned near the area that has the largest demand for bulk items.

With all of these involved with Marcellus shale drilling, it is beneficial to the local economy and the nation as a whole providing jobs, revenue streams and energy reserves that are made available by the energy businesses.

The sponsor of this blog is TRAN-Z a company that owns short line railroads that haul bulk materials out of quarries and sand and gravel plants, as well as serve as interconnecting lines to frac sand suppliers for the Marcellus Shale Drilling industry.  They build transloading stations to accommodate the needs of contractors that work in the gas drilling business.

If you have any questions or comments we invite you to leave them as comments below the blog posts, or to use the Contact form at the top of the page to inquire about any of your specific needs.

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The Marcellus shale Pennsylvania deposit is one of the, if not the riches energy reserve in continental America. While this deposit can be found in surrounding states, it is nearest the surface in Pennsylvania which makes it more cost effective to extract. This shale rock layer is located at the surface and up to 9000 feet deep in some areas.

For land owners in Pennsylvania they should be aware that 60% of the state is over the Marcellus shale deposit. This includes all of the northern and western portions of the state. Another fact that the land owners should be aware of is that all mining contracts between the land owners and the energy companies are private and not regulated by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and its Department of Environmental Protection.

The exploration for the recovery of energy from this region mainly started in 2008 when 195 wells were established. That number has grown to a total of 963 wells in 2009 and as of May 2010 there were 1327 recovering domestic energy for the American market. These wells are being leased by the energy producers which is bring in a steady revenue stream to many areas of Pennsylvania that is helping these areas to recover from the tough economic climate we are all facing.

Oil and gas wells in Pennsylvania are nothing new. The very first well was drilled in 1859 and since that time the total number of wells that has been drilled over exceeded 350,000. A majority of these wells were drilled to extract the easily recoverable energy reserves. This is different than the wells being drilled for energy extraction in the Marcellus shale layer where hydro fracturing and frac sand must be used to release the trapped oil and natural gas.

Thanks to the Marcellus shale Pennsylvania deposit, the American public has a domestic source of oil and natural gas they can depend on for the next 100 years. Each one of these wells is helping to curb the American’s economy from its dependency of foreign energy suppliers.

TRAN-Z, the sponsor of this Blog facilitates goods and materials for Marcellus shale fracking.