What does Marcellus Shale contain?
The Marcellus Shale contains about 84 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered, technically recoverable natural gas and 3.4 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable natural gas liquids according to a new assessment by the U. S. Geological Survey (USGS).
What is the composition of shale gas?
Shale gas is natural gas trapped within tiny pore spaces in shale formations. It is a hydrocarbon gas mixture. It consists mainly of methane. Other hydrocarbons are natural gas liquids (NGLs) like ethane, propane, and butane, and it also contains carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and hydrogen sulfide.
What does natural gas have to do with Marcellus Shale?
The natural gas is trapped in low-permeability shale, and requires the well completion method of hydraulic fracturing to allow the gas to flow to the well bore. The surge in drilling activity in the Marcellus Shale since 2008 has generated both economic benefits and considerable controversy.
Is there oil in Marcellus Shale?
The Marcellus Shale also contains an estimated 1.5 billion barrels of natural gas liquids, while the Point Pleasant-Utica Shale also contains an estimated 1.8 billion barrels of oil and 985 million barrels of natural gas liquids. Natural gas liquids are liquid hydrocarbons like propane, butane and/or ethane.
How did the Marcellus Shale form?
How did the Marcellus Shale form? About 390 million years ago, what is now western Pennsylvania was part of a large inland sea. Biological matter and organisms dropped to this sea floor over time and mixed with sediments brought into the sea by rivers from the surrounding landmass.
How is shale gas different from natural gas?
Shale gas has the same composition as natural gas. Every shale gas is a natural gas, the difference between the types of gases are the locations of the reservoirs. Natural gas can be found in big amounts, while shale gas is trapped inside the microcracks of a rock.
Why is the Marcellus Shale important?
This shale contains significant quantities of natural gas. New devel- opments in drilling technology, along with higher wellhead prices, have made the Marcellus Shale an important natural gas resource. This water must be recovered from the well and disposed of before the gas can flow.
What is the Marcellus Shale project about?
The Marcellus Shale is a geologic formation of shale rock buried deep under parts of Pennsylvania, New York and West Virginia. This formation contains a large amount of natural gas distributed throughout the shale in cracks and pores.
How long will Marcellus shale gas last?
How long do gas wells produce? The life expectancy of a natural gas well in shale is 30 to 50 years, with 30 years being the most common.
How much gas is in the Marcellus Shale?
Using a geology-based assessment methodology, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) estimated a mean undiscovered natural gas resource of 84,198 billion cubic feet and a mean undiscovered natural gas liquids resource of 3,379 million barrels in the Devonian Marcellus Shale within the Appalachian Basin Province. All this resource occurs in continuous…
Why is gas so slow to come out of the Marcellus?
Most of the recoverable gas is contained in the pore spaces. However, the gas has difficulty escaping through the pore spaces because they are very tiny and poorly connected. Most historic wells in the Marcellus produced gas at a very slow rate because of the low permeability mentioned above.
Where is the Middle Devonian Marcellus Shale located?
The Middle Devonian Marcellus Shale in the Appalachian basin extends from central Ohio on the west to eastern New York on the east, and from north-central New York on the north to northern Tennessee on the south. Its thickness ranges from 0 feet (ft) where it pinches out to the west to as much as 700 ft in its eastern extent.
Which is the leading shale gas formation in the US?
United States Shale Gas Production by formation: This graph shows the time-trend of dry shale gas production for the major shale gas producing formations. It clearly shows that the Marcellus Shale formation got off to a relatively late start but quickly became the national production leader.
