CONSOL energy official gives update on Utica Shale

COLUMBIANA — The reasons are both economic and technological why companies are focusing a small portion of the Utica Shale.

Harry Schurr, general manager of Utica Operations for CONSOL Energy, said today that currently the western portion of the shale, which contains significantly more oil is too shallow and does not contain enough pressure to economically extract the oil.

In the eastern portion of the Utica, there is mostly dry gas, but extracting the dry gas isn’t economical as extracting dry gas in the Marcellus Shale because the Marcellus is geologically shallower than the Utica and therefore cheaper to drill and complete, Schurr said.

This has caused some companies to focus on the condensate-rich portions of the Utica play. For CONSOL, this includes Noble County, and with its partner HESS, the center portion of acreage between Jefferson, Harrison, Guernsey and Belmont counties, he said. Natural-gas condensate is a low-density mixture of hydrocarbon liquids that exists in the raw natural gas produced from many natural-gas fields.

For the complete story, read Saturday’s Vindicator and Vindy.com