The Saudi Arabia Of Shale

IBD Editorials ^ | August 17, 2009 | INVESTORS BUSINESS DAILY Staff

[Kaslin]

Energy Policy: New York's governor wants to tap into a shale formation that can supply the entire U.S. with natural gas for 65 years. Will NIMBY environmentalists let him stimulate New York's and America's energy economy?

---

Last week, David Patterson released a draft report of his Energy Planning Board that does something Democrats are loath to do: It proposes developing a domestic energy resource — the huge amounts of natural gas trapped in the Marcellus Shale formation. New York produces 5% of its natural gas in-state and imports more than 95% from the Gulf Coast and Canada.

The Marcellus Shale stretches from southwestern New York to Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio. A nearby formation of Devonian shale is even more porous, with a superior amount of trapped gas per volume of rock.

Geologist Gary Lash of State University New York at Fredonia and colleague Terry Engelder of Penn State estimate that Marcellus holds 1,300 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. About 20 trillion cubic feet are produced in the U.S. annually.

Lash notes that successful wells have already been drilled in Pennsylvania — one near Pittsburgh and the other in Susquehanna County. A Penn State report that was requested by state legislators predicted that Marcellus could add $14 billion to the state's economy in 2010, create more than 98,000 jobs and generate $800 million in state and local tax revenues. Now that's what you call a stimulus package.

[green iguana]

The Saudis use the gases from their oil wells

Where there's oil, there's always some gas with it. What I meant was they have little standalone gas.

Mostly just trying to point out the difference between gas and gasoline, which tends to confuse some people.

[Kenny Bunk]

TDP does the whole distillation almost perfectly,

This ethanol craze drives me crazy. The Greenies are always pointing to Brazil. Lousy example, as after half-heartedly trying ethanol as their main motor fuel, the Brazilians were smart enough to discover giant oilfields, and thus were able to go back to drinking ethanol, instead of using it to try getting VWs up to 50 mph.

Methanol from coal, which I understand is quite abundant in some states, is the ticket! I still prefer small turbocharged, multi-point injection, clean diesels, which have been discovered all over the world except here in Green Obamastan.

[nikos1121]

the most assinine is using food for fuel. Is it true that it actually costs more in energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than oil, and the govt subsidies off set this.

So we’re paying taxes to subsidize an industry that is not efficient as drilling for our own oil, which at the same time uses food.

Sarah Palin needs to speak out on this.

[RinaseaofDs]

Bingo. Nuclear’s been the way to go since the 70’s.

If we can put a reactor on a sub, we can certainly manage it on the beach, even on a fault.

The biggest benefit - all the freshwater you can make with the excess heat.

[TheThirdRuffian]

“in Western New York, it’s more like one or two hundred feet”

That would be in the water table. 200 feet is 60 yards.

It’s probably about 2,000 feet, which is VERY shallow.

(I am an oil driller; own a drilling company in New Mexico.)

[meatloaf]

Now that you mention it, you’re right. Lots of folks are wondering just whose gas the wells are extracting. I remember hearing about a driller locally that got run off because they ended up with a dog leg in the bore.

[crusty old prospector]

A dogleg is inadvertently becoming crooked, so much that the drill string begins to rub along the sides of the borehole where the bends are. It can become stuck because of the friction or it can wear holes on the pipe. Drillers try to keep a hole within a certain tolerance - say 3 degrees from vertical.

A horizontal well is purposefully kicked off from the vertical with a smooth transition to a 90 degree lateral. By law, this lateral is confined with the outline of the production unit that they have set up. In Pennsylvania, it is probably a standard section, which is 640 acres or one square mile. Most laterals are around 4000' so it would remain with the limits of the unit. Of course, they then frac the lateral in multiple stages to help reach out beyond the borehole. Think of a horizontal well as a replacement for multiple vertical wells. Fields that were at best marginally productive can now be commercial.

[AmericanVictory]

You are exactly right, not only do I and those I work with support the Bill of Rights we believe that our failure to support similar rights in other countries in lieu of our having fought and won wars only to install Eurosocialism has been a mistake that has been unnecessarily costly.