Marcellus Shale Fracking – Transloading Bulk Materials for Marcellus Shale Drilling

Archive for the ‘Marcellus Shale’ Category

The Marcellus Shale deposit in the Appalachian mountain region is not a new discovery. It was originally named for the town it was found near, by Prof. James Hall, New York State Geologist,  in 1839. While this sedimentary rock layer is at the surface near Marcellus, New York, it can also be found up to 7000 feet below the surface in other areas.

This deposit was left behind during the Devonian time period some nearly 400 million years ago. This deposit of shale or sedimentary rock covers an area from New York, Pennsylvania to the north, Ohio and West Virginia to the west and east and as far south as Tennessee.

This deposit was mainly left untapped because there were other energy reserves that were easier to extract natural gas and oil from. The exploration of the possible gas reserves in the Marcellus region began in 2003 when a well was drilled in Pennsylvania.

The first natural gas well that was drilled for production use was in 2005. Since then hundreds have begun operations.

Today the Marcellus shale deposit is considered the largest natural gas deposit in the continental United States. The use of hydro fracturing has been found to make these natural gas wells produce more of the energy reserve easier to be extracted. This process involved 99.5% water and the remainder of frac sand and other chemicals to help cause fissures in the rock bed.

The estimated amount of the gas reserve still in the Marcellus formation is between 168 and 516 billion cubic feet. This estimate was published in the Petroleum News on January 27, 2008 and was the findings of two geosciences, professors Terry Engelder and Gary Lash.

As long as there is a demand for natural gas, the Marcellus shale reserve should be able to supply the US demand for the next 100 years.

American natural gas shale deposits are in several regions of the nation. The best known is the Marcellus Shale Deposit that covers the states of New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio. To a lesser extent, the states Maryland and Virginia, along with Lake Erie, also have a limited amount under them.

Right next to the Marcellus deposit is the Devonian Shale Deposit that reaches from Ohio in the north, to Tennessee in the south. These two together are the largest deposits in the nation, with estimated 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas deposits in the shale rock bed.

The second largest region is the Barnett Shale Deposit in northern Texas. This deposit covers 17 counties including the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. Other significant deposits are the Haynesville Shale Deposit in the northwestern portion of Louisiana, and Fayetteville Shale Deposit in Arkansas.

There are other smaller deposits in Wyoming, Utah, Kansas, Oklahoma, Illinois, and Michigan, each one with proven reserves that is currently being tapped. What has slowed the recovery of these deposits is the drop in the price of natural gas.

The decline in prices is not due to a reduction in the demand for this domestic natural resource, but the plentiful supply of it. This in turn has reduced the profit potential of recovering this type of deposit.

Unlike other reservoirs, horizontal drilling must occur with fracking the wells to recover natural gas from the shale deposits. This has slowed the recovery of the natural gas from these regions slightly.

European countries are starting to venture into the US market with interest in our natural gas deposits. Their reliance on Russian gas has been problematic for years, so a switch to America is gaining strength.

This should not be a worry since the American natural gas shale deposits are large enough to last America with over 100 years of this energy reserve, we will not be running out any time soon.

The Marcellus shale region in the north eastern portion of the United States is the largest deposit of its kind in the hemisphere. This deposit is nothing new. It was discovered in the 1800’s but due to the need for a new type of tapping into the rock layer (horizontal drilling) and the abundance of reservoirs of natural gas that were easier to extract, this region was not developed until recently.

This layer of shale rock is 400 million years old. It is deep ocean sediment that was deprived of oxygen during the Devonian period in the Paleozoic era. This was a period in time when there was a mass extinction of life in the oceans and the shale rock beds around the world are the results.

The reason scientists have concluded for this formation to be found in multiple places around the globe is due to the very active tectonic plate movement of the period. It has been determined that the Appalachian Mountains in America along with the Caledonian Mountains in Great Britain and Scandinavia were created and rose above sea level when the super continent Pangaea was formed.

The extinction of the marine life that formed this layer is assumed to be from the rising temperature that existed during this period. Most of the world was covered by water and there were no glaciers in this time period. The surface temperature of the water has been estimated to be at 30 C or 86 F.

With this information most people had deduced that the global warming of this early period in earth’s history formed the energy reserves we are extracting today. Since the Marcellus shale region was formed by global warming, this natural fluctuation in the earth’s temperature can’t be all bad.

Click this link to read more about Marcellus Shale Drillers

The Marcellus shale rock deposit is the largest untapped energy reserve that is located in the continental United States. This region and the energy reserves that it contains has been known for decades, but left untouched because of the cost to extract the natural gas and oil from it.

This has changed in the past decade for two reasons, the improvements of horizontal drilling and the increased cost of natural gas and oil. A further contributor is the advancements in the technique of well fracking.

With all of these factors combined, the Marcellus region is expanding rapidly with well exploration. The only variable to the wells being bored is the depth of the shale rock formation. In most areas, this has already been determined.

The considerations that are determining the actual sites of the wells are several. This includes the proximity to a transloading site for the material that will need to be brought in. The closer the transloading site is to the well, the lower the transportation costs of materials will be.

The amount of monetary compensation the land owner is requiring is another factor that heavily influences whether the site is favorable or not. Since access to the shale rock formation covers a vast area, most any location will provide the same amount of access to the energy reserves.

The difference in most of the contracts with land owners is the compensation to recover the land after the well is no longer productive. Some call for no action while others have the rig dismantled and removed with the land cover being replaced with vegetation.

One known fact of the Marcellus shale reserve is there is enough natural gas in the ground to supply America with its natural gas needs for over 100 years, at its current rate of consumption.

Our sponsor, TranZ, is here to assist with materials and transloading of all type goods needed for this industry.

The natural gas shale industry is booming, not only in the Marcellus deposit region in the northeastern part of America, but around the world. Shale rock formations have long been known to contain large amounts of natural gas and oil deposits. The reason this industry did not boom until lately was that the demand for natural gas has increased and the free natural gas deposits are limited and not meeting the demand anymore.

The most influential reason the shale deposits are being invested in and recovered is the profit potential. Back in January of 1981, the price of natural gas the American consumer paid a thousand cubic feet was $3.94. Since this time, the price has steadily risen. 20 years later, in January of 2001, the price for the same amount of natural gas used by the American consumer had risen to $10.12. The historical peak in price reached $20.68 in July of 2008.

With a 2 ½ fold to 5 fold increase in price, it has now become economically feasible to invest in the shale rock deposits for the recovery of natural gas. To help with this endeavor, the development of horizontal drilling and the use of hydro fracking have dramatically increased the potential of each well that is bored.

It has been estimated that the natural gas in the shale rock deposit in the Marcellus region has enough to supply the needs of America for almost 116 years. With this type of energy reserve potential buried under America, the chances that our country will become independent from foreign oil and gas imports is a dream that may be realized in the future.

The natural gas shale industry will be a large part of America fulfilling the dream of not being reliant on the Middle East for our energy needs.  TranZ, our sponsor will be there to serve this industry with transloading the necessary materials and equipment needed to produce this natural gas.

The Marcellus Shale natural gas deposit was not exploited when it was first located due to the difficulty in extracting the gas. Like most business ventures, with increased difficulty comes an increase in price.

When first studied by the USGS in 2002, the estimate of the reserve was only at 1.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Because of the vast size of the deposit which reaches into 5 states and under parts of Lake Erie, the production per acre was not enough to invest in.

There are always businessmen that venture where few will go. One company, Range Resources, lead the way into investing in drilling for gas in the Marcellus Shale with surprisingly good results. They deployed the process of hydro fracturing in their drilling process. Between 2005 and 2007, 375 wells were drilled that were producing natural gas.

This helped spur a survey conducted by Penn State University in 2008. They changed the estimate of natural gas in the Marcellus deposit to over 500 trillion cubic feet of gas.

As of the end of 2009, there are three major players in the natural gas drilling field in the Marcellus region. The leader by rights in acreage to drill is Chesapeake Energy with 1.45 million acres. The second is Range Resources with 1.4 million acres, and the third is Cabot Oil and Gas that holds the rights to 1.2 million acres.

To give you the value of this deposit in usage, 25 trillion cubic feet of natural gas is what the American consumers use nationwide. With the Marcellus Shale natural gas deposit holding up to 500 trillion cubic feet, there is potentially enough energy deposited there to supply America’s needs for 20 years.

Contact this blog’s sponsor, TranZ, for more information by: CLICKING HERE

When Marcellus Shale drillers decide on a location to drill for natural gas, they have the latest scientific data to assist them. The process they also use will be a newly developed technology that was designed specifically for the type of land formation and deposits that exist in the Marcellus Shale formation. This new method is called horizontal drilling.

Horizontal Drilling

Horizontal drilling was developed between 1985 and 1993. With the aid of directional boring, wells can now be drilled to a specific level, and then turned horizontal for a greater chance of extracting a natural gas deposit. This technology has the capability to reach depths up to 15,000 feet. The deepest known gas deposit in the Marcellus Shale formation is only 7000 feet deep.

Because of this new advancement, many companies from around the world have made investments in the area of the Marcellus Shale deposits. This not only includes Americans, but also Canadian and Indian companies. The states of Pennsylvania and West Virginia have the greater number of wells at this time and the state of New York is in the process of drilling for the gas deposits that are located in their state.

For those workers with drilling experience, the jobs are mainly in Pennsylvania. In 2008, 29,000 jobs were added related to the Marcellus shale formation. In 2009, 48,000 more were added, and in 2010, 107,000 are expected to be open. Less than 1% of those jobs will be directly involved with the drilling operations. The rest are in supporting the crews of the many wells that are being operated and planned.

What is known is that the numbers of Marcellus Shale drillers that will be needed per well are averaging 11.53 full time employees. What is for sure is that there will be work in these region connected to the Marcellus shale formation for at least the next 100 years.
This process of natural gas drilling is good for the employment economy as well as supplying energy needs.

Our Transloading blog sponsor is TranZ and they are in the support business of supplying bulk materials and and transportation of the unique materials needed in this industry.

Click this link to read more about the Marcellus Shale Region

The term hydraulic fracturing is used to describe a process used to extract additional natural gas or oil from a rock or shale formation. This process was developed over 60 years ago and has been used in over 1 million wells around the world since.

The basic principle is similar to draining a bird bath made of concrete. When the center plug is released, the water drains out but there are puddles remaining. Once the concrete is cracked, the remaining water has a path to leak out. With this extraction technique, water is used to do the fracturing of the rock. This is done under high pressure.

Once the fractures are created, a means to keep them open is needed. This is done with grains of sand that have also been injected into the well along with the fracturing fluid. The sand is porous and allows the oil or gas to move and gives it the opportunity for its extraction to the surface.

The pressure required to fracture the area surrounding the existing well is dependent on its makeup. The harder the material is, the more pressure that is needed. The highest pressure that is usually applied is 15,000 psi. Since most of the natural gas is in regions where coal and shale are present, that extreme pressure is not needed to fracture the material.

The purpose of this process is to help stimulate a well into producing additional oil or gas from the well. In 2008, 58% of the natural gas well and 38% of the oil wells in America underwent this process. As for the safety issues involved with this mining technique, the EPA conducted a study in 2004. Its conclusion was that the process of hydraulic fracturing posed little to no threat to the drinking water supplies of the surrounding areas where this process is used and no further studies were warranted.

The Marcellus shale deposit was so named in 1839 by James Hall because of its exposure at the surface in a cliff near Marcellus, New York. This is just a small portion of it. Most of this shale deposit lies thousands of feet below the surface of the ground in the Appalachian basin from New York in the north to parts of Virginia in the south and into Ohio to the west. This layer of organic sediment is thought o be nearly 390 million years old.

The reason for its importance is the vast amounts of natural gas that is trapped within this organic layer. In 2002, the USGS team estimated that 1.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas may be lying undiscovered beneath the Marcellus shale deposit. This has recently changed. By 2007, over 375 wells have been producing gas in the region, and in 2008, the estimated amount of natural gas potential of the region was increased to 500 trillion cubic feet.

The extraction technique that is used is mainly horizontal drilling because the fractures in this layer are vertical. After the initial extraction, a secondary technique is used to extract additional gas from the shale layer. This is called hydraulic fracturing. This is when water is pumped under high pressure into the well to further the fracturing of the shale which releases even more gas. To prevent the fractures from collapsing, sand grains are forced in to the fractures, hence the term fracking sand.

The significance of this deposit can be expressed by the fact that if only 10% of the estimated 500 trillion cubic feet of gas can be recovered, that is enough to supply every American home with natural gas for 2 years. The Marcellus shale deposit is the largest single reservoir of natural gas in America that can help supply this nation with a domestic energy source and lessen our need of foreign resources.

This blog at Transloading.org being a blog about the company, TranZ, will be discussing Marcellus shale and the natural gas drilling methods used as this is the major part of this company’s business.  TranZ provides short line rail service from the mines that produce the fracking sand to bring this sand to railheads where the transloading process is able to deliver the sand to the end user contractor.