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."