Marcellus shale means money for western Pa. land owners

Marcellus shale means money for western Pa. land owners

LAWRENCE COUNTY, PA.

Rich and Shirley Sallmen built their house three years ago on a treeless hill on 24 acres surrounded by peaceful, rolling farmland that makes up much of Little Beaver Township.

On Wampum-Mount Air Road where the Sallmens live, there are other new, large homes alongside smaller ones that have clearly been there for many decades.

If you take the winding, hilly road for about two more miles, you’ll see Walker Road on your right — a public road but not much bigger than “a cow path, really,” as Shirley describes.

Not far up Walker is the first development of its kind in Lawrence County — a natural gas well created by hydraulic fracturing. Drilled in August by Shell Western Exploration and Production on land owned by Harry Patterson, the well is the beginning of what’s to come for Lawrence and Mercer counties as gas companies get ready to develop them for hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in the Marcellus Shale, a 5,000- to 8,000-foot-deep rock formation that lies under much of Pennsylvania and parts of New York, West Virginia, Ohio and Maryland.

Fracking is used both in vertical and horizontal drilling. The drilling is followed by the pumping of millions of gallons of fluid at high pressure into shale rock. The fluid cracks the rock apart and allows drillers to recover the gas.

The Marcellus is, in geological terms, a super giant gas field. Gas companies are eagerly gobbling land to get to it, served up in large and small portions through leases with property owners.

At farms with hundreds of acres in the countryside and at homes of people who live on small parcels, landmen working for gas companies have appeared, offering lease-signing bonuses and royalty shares in gas production.

By simply owning property, people are making money. Some have become millionaires, and others are making several thousand dollars off just a few acres.

In Lawrence County, about 4,000 leases have been signed. State Department of Environmental Protection information shows permits issued through March for 11 horizontal hydraulic fracturing wells, some Marcellus and some Utica, a shale formation below the Marcellus. The permits are for seven sites throughout the county.

Read much more in The Vindicator’s extended coverage on Sunday. Also on Vindy.com