Marcellus Shale Fracking for Natural Gas

August 11th, 2011 | Author: richhill

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.