One of the more provocative shale plays swirling through the U.S. is in Alabama's Valley and Ridge province, east of the Black Warrior Basin. In 2005 in northern St. Clair County, Dominion Black Warrior Basin Inc. opened a new field that was productive from Cambrian Conasauga shale, a much older interval than the Mississippian Floyd/Neal shale that has been targeted in the basin proper. This landmark field marked the Cotton State's first production in the Valley and Ridge and first shale-gas field. The stir really got roused last summer when one of Dominion's early wells, Andrews #27-14, apparently blew out during drilling operations. According to testimony by a Dominion executive at an Alabama Oil & Gas Board hearing in February 2007, "the well encountered a significant gas flow at roughly 3,500 feet. The drilling rig initiated control procedures and shut the well in. We brought in world-class well-control experts to control the well." Dominion didn't run the gas through a meter, but field observers have pegged rates of flow from the Andrews well at between 5- and 9 million cubic feet per day. That's the kind of event that sharply focuses attention on an area, especially one with no previous production. And as people began to take a long look at Conasauga shale in the Valley and Ridge, they began to appreciate some of very unusual attributes of this emerging play. For more on this, see the September issue of Oil and Gas Investor. For a subscription, call 713-260-6441.

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