Professor, Two Students to Study Marcellus Shale

WVU Daily Athenaeum
26 January 2011
By Joel Moraels

A professor and two graduate students at West Virginia University are working on an 18-month project to remove natural gas from Marcellus Shale, one of the largest known natural gas fields in the world.

Marcellus Shale, an immense stretch of rock that runs deep underground through parts of Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio and West Virginia, is rich in natural gas.

"The petroleum and natural gas division is one of few organizations like it in the country," said Mary Dillon, marketing and communications coordinator for WVU's College of Engineering and Mineral Resources. "Since Marcellus Shale is happening in our backyard, it's great to be involved from a research standpoint."

The goal is to obtain as much natural gas as possible while doing the least amount of damage to the environment, said Shahab Mohaghegh, a WVU professor of petroleum and natural gas engineering and principal investigator of the project.

"There is a new technology that the industry has been pioneering for the last 15 to 20 years," Mohaghegh said. "When it began, everybody thought we were crazy, and it wasn't until quite recently that the industry realized its value."

The new technology, called "top-down modeling," integrates traditional reservoir engineering analysis with new technology to generate a full-field model. By using the reverse of the traditional approach, researchers save time and resources while obtaining accurate predictive models.

Facilities at WVU were used in the application of this groundbreaking technology, while the information remains public.

"WVU's part is to build a realistic model of gas production in Marcellus Shale," Mohaghegh said. "If we can do this, we will be able to predict how the different wells will behave."

WVU is working with numerous parties to be successful in their endeavors at Marcellus Shale, including the University of Texas at Austin, Pennsylvania State University, Pinnacle Technologies, Range Resources, and Schlumberger Gas Institute, Mohaghegh said.

Marcellus Shale controversy surrounds a way of drilling previously used called "fracking," in which 8 million gallons of water and chemical additives mixed with sand or similar materials are pumped down a well under high pressure.

This allows contaminated water to escape to the surface as well as unwanted gas release in the well.

"Everybody is interested in Marcellus Shale right now," said Mohaghegh. "We want to show that our technology will help increase production, while decreasing the environmental footprint it leaves."