![]() Growing numbers of oil and gas companies are gearing to test the liquids-rich Utica Shale below the Marcellus formation in Ohio and Pennsylvania. ![]() Just how significant could Utica activity be for the Buckeye State’s economic recovery? Similar to the local economic booms associated with the Marcellus in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, the Bakken Shale in North Dakota and the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas, leasing and initial exploration and drilling activity already are generating economic benefits in Ohio, one of the states hit hardest by the recession and chronic high unemployment rates. The epicenter of initial drilling and development activity to test the potential of the Utica is in eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania. In fact, the Utica has nearly twice as much areal extent as the Marcellus, spanning more than 170,000 square miles (110 million acres) beneath eight states and across the border into Canada. ![]() Energy Information Administration, natural gas production in Pennsylvania and West Virginia now averages almost 4 billion cubic feet a day–more than five times the average daily volumes produced in the first four years of Marcellus activity from 2004 to 2008–and accounts for more than 85 percent of all gas produced in the Northeast United States.īut lurking 2,000 to 7,000 feet beneath the massive Marcellus formation is an even more dominant geologic feature: the Utica Shale, an Ordovician-age formation that is thicker and much more geographically expansive than even the Marcellus. Seven years after Range Resources drilled the discovery well to the play, the Marcellus ranks as the second largest natural gas accumulation on the planet, with up to 500 trillion cubic feet of estimated recoverable reserves.Īccording to the U.S. The Marcellus Shale is a thick “blanket” formation that covers 95,000 square miles (61 million acres) across the Appalachian Basin.
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