Marcellus Shale Region
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.
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