DOE research in Marcellus Shale region will help improve drilling techniques

New research from a drilling site near Morgantown, W.V., will help the U.S. Department of Energy and its partners improve gas recovery from horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing at sites throughout the region.

The research is being conducted by Marcellus Shale Engineering and Environmental Laboratory and is funded by the DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) along with West Virginia University (WVU) and Northeast Natural Energy (NNE).

The effort advances hydraulic fracture stimulation techniques that were pioneered by NETL researchers years ago, NETL’s Robert Vagnetti explained. One of the goals is to develop advanced completion capabilities that can be applied to other areas of the Marcellus Shale region to improve resource recovery efficiency. The Marcellus Shale region is the most prolific natural gas-producing formation in the Appalachian basin, extending from New York State to Tennessee. It covers about 95,000 square miles, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The site being studied is the Morgantown Industrial Park site in western Monongalia County, W.V. WVU and NNE designed stimulation zones or “stages” that optimized perforations around natural fractures in the shale at the site. Monitoring using seismic and fiber optic distributed temperature and acoustic sensing (DAS/DTS) during stimulation confirmed that these stages outperformed conventional geometrically designed stages.

“DAS/DTS is too costly to be used on all wells. Therefore, aided by advanced numerical modeling developed by WVU, the project team will compare the use and results of new completion/stimulation techniques at the Core site to the large array of relatively cost-prohibitive techniques used in the Morgantown Industrial Park wells,” Vagnetti said.

If successful, this project will yield tools and analytical techniques that can be used to improve future resource recovery efficiency throughout the region. More extensive testing at a second new well site near Core, W.V. began this week.

Vagnetti said that monitoring of produced fluids and natural gas will continue at the Core site to confirm earlier findings of no adverse environmental impacts resulting from the operations.