USGS: Utica Shale holds 38 Tcf

Luke Johnson

04 October 2012 23:17 GMT

The Utica Shale, one of the most hotly anticipated new unconventional onshore plays, contains about 38 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered, technically recoverable natural gas, according to a new assessment by the US Geological Survey.

The formation - underlying the prolific Marcellus Shale throughout parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and New York - also holds an average of 940 million barrels of oil and about 9 million barrels of natural gas liquids, USGS said in its first assessment of the play.

It is located in the Appalachian basin, the longest-producing petroleum province in the US.

The estimates still pale in comparison to the Marcellus, which holds about 84 Tcf of gas - top among plays the USGS has assessed.

The Utica assessment is an estimate of continuous oil, gas, and NGL accumulations in the Upper Ordovician.

The estimate of undiscovered oil ranges from 590 million barrels to 1.39 billion barrels, natural gas ranges from 21 to 61 Tcf, and the estimate of NGLs ranges from 4 million to 16 million barrels.

Explorers have looked to the Utica for its oil potential, as gas prices in the US have tanked following major production in places like Marcellus.

Some early wells have shown promise. Chesapeake Energy's Buell 10-11-5 8H in Harrison County, Ohio, came on at a peak rate of 3010 barrels of oil equivalent per day, have of it liquids.

The most recent well, Rex Energy's Brace 1H well in Carroll County, Ohio, produced 1094 boepd, split between 43% natural gas liquids, 31% dry gas and 26% condensate.