USGS says Utica Shale development could require 127,500 wells

October 10, 2012

The drilling and oilfield services industry should be pleased with the first assessment of oil and gas reserves in the Utica Shale play by the US Geological Survey, which indicates that extraction of the reserves would take approximately 110,000 wells in the gas window and another 17,500 wells in the oil window.

To date, about 144 horizontal wells have been drilled in Ohio, which is where the richest reserves are located. By comparison, about 26,000 wells have been drilled so far in the overlying Marcellus Shale formation, which is generally considered to be about two to three years ahead of the Utica in terms of development.

The “sweet spot” of what the USGS refers to in oil assessment lies almost entirely in Ohio and covers about 2.1 million acres in the east-central part of that Midwestern state.

The Utica Shale contains about 38 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of undiscovered, technically recoverable natural gas, according to the report. The Utica has a mean of 940 million barrels of unconventional oil resources and a mean of 208 million barrels of unconventional natural gas liquids.

Read the story in its entirety at The Oil and Gas Financial Journal.