Chesapeake Energy Declares Success in Utica Shale

Susan Phillips

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Susan Phillips tells stories about the consequences of political decisions on people's every day lives. She has worked as a reporter for WHYY since 2004. Susan's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election resulted in a story on the front page of the New York Times. In 2010 she traveled to Haiti to cover the earthquake. That same year she produced an award-winning series on Pennsylvania's natural gas rush called "The Shale Game." She received a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award for her work covering natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. She has also won several Edward R. Murrow awards for her work with StateImpact. In 2013/14 she spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She has also been a Metcalf Fellow, an MBL Logan Science Journalism Fellow and reported from Marrakech on the 2016 climate talks as an International Reporting Project Fellow. A graduate of Columbia School of Journalism, she earned her Bachelor's degree in International Relations from George Washington University.

September 28, 2011 | 12:44 PM

Scott Detrow / StateImpact Pennsylvania

Chesapeake CEO Aubrey McClendon speaks to the Marcellus Shale Coalition's "Shale Gas Insight" conference

The largely undeveloped Utica Shale lies thousands of feet below the Marcellus Shale, and stretches beneath Kentucky, up through West Virginia, eastern Ohio, western Pennsylvania, New York and Canada. Just a day after the Wall Street Journal reported on the Utica Shale’s potential, Chesapeake Energy announced preliminary results of its Utica Shale development in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Chesapeake has leased 1.2 million acres in the Utica Shale play. In a release, Chesapeake says their 12 horizontal wells have successfully produced both dry and wet gas. Wet gas is also known as ethane, and fetches a higher price than dry gas. Chesapeake is also looking to develop oil reserves in the Utica Shale. Shares of Chesapeake jumped to $29 dollars after the announcement.