A Double Play for Range Resources in Southwest PA

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 30, 2011 | 3:20 PM

It turns out the Marcellus Shale lies sandwiched between two other potentially lucrative rock formations. This week we wrote about Chesapeake Energy’s reported success in the Utica Shale, which lies below the Marcellus. The Upper Devonian Shale lies above the Marcellus. Platts reports that Pennsylvania driller Range Resources is looking to tap gas in that more shallow layer of rock.

Upper Devonian, found at shallower depths than the Marcellus Shale that sits around 6,500 feet deep in southwest Pennsylvania, may hold “probably an equal amount of gas per section…as there is in the Marcellus,” Ray Walker, a senior vice president of Range, said late Tuesday at the Independent Petroleum Association of America’s Oil and Gas Investment Seminar in San Francisco.

For the Platts report, click here.