The Appalachian Basin’s Marcellus is living up to its potential as one of the nation’s top-tier shale-gas reservoirs. That is the conclusion of presenters in UGcenter.com’s recent Marcellus shale webinar, which is available on demand now at https://www.ugcenter.com/Events/Webinars/0512Marcellus/.

The kick-off speaker was Randy Wright, founder of Nashville-based reservoir engineering firm Wright & Co. Inc.

“The Marcellus is not a new zone; it’s just the latest unconventional oil and gas play in the Appalachian Basin,” said Wright. He noted the Marcellus covers 65 million acres, sprawls across portions of eight states, and is the largest U.S. shale play in area and in potential.

Unique challenges in the Marcellus include Pennsylvania’s revised regulations, which feature sharply higher permit fees and requirements for water management plans. Protection of groundwater, handling of process water, and development of needed infrastructure are additional considerations.

“Development is in its infancy, but initial results are very encouraging,” said Wright.

Peter M. Duncan, founding president of MicroSeismic Inc., a Houston-based geophysical service company, spoke next. Duncan described various approaches to microseismic monitoring in the Marcellus, from downhole monitor wells, to surface arrays to buried systems.

Microseismic information will be increasingly important as the Marcellus play develops, said Duncan. Companies need full knowledge of how the reservoir acts during stimulations to achieve the best completion strategies.

“We believe there will be natural fracture/joint reactivations in the Marcellus,” says Duncan. “And we will see this in the form of diffuse patterns.” Single-plane, bi-wing fracs are not going to occur in the Marcellus.

“We’re going to have to watch how things move as we go from north to south, but at the end microseismic monitoring is going to be very important to understanding how we do react with the Marcellus shale.”

Finally, an operator’s perspective was offered by Benjamin W. Hulburt, chief executive officer and director of State College, Pennsylvania-based Rex Energy.

Rex has 65,000 net acres in the Marcellus fairway, and Hulburt spoke about the company’s operations across its holdings.

This year, Rex has finished drilling its first horizontal well, in Butler County, and has spudded another in Westmoreland County. It plans four horizontal wells there before moving its fit-for-purpose rig to its Clearfield and Centre counties area.

The Marcellus has tremendous upside for Rex. The company has sufficient acreage to drill 423 net horizontal wells on 100-acre spacing, for net potential reserves of 850 Bcfe to 1.3 Tcfe.

“We, and the other Marcellus shale players out there, have a hell of an asset that I don’t personally think the market is accurately valuing at this point,” said Hulburt. “As the play continues to mature and gets proved, that will benefit all the Marcellus players tremendously.”

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