Report Suggests Ohio's Utica Shale Packed With Gas

Production numbers are showing a lot of natural gas in Ohio’s Utica Shale, as the AP reports:

Figures reported Monday by Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy Corp. show five wells in eastern Ohio producing 2.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas in 2011. The other four wells produced hundreds of barrels of oil but are not in natural gas production yet, according to Chesapeake.
The report, which Chesapeake provided to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, shows one well in Harrison County producing 1.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas, or 2 percent of the state’s entire natural gas production.
Put another way, that well has 300 times more in daily production than the average well drilled vertically into the ground, said Rick Simmers, chief of ODNR’s Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management.

In addition to becoming drilling hotspot, Ohio is also a repository for Pennsylvania drillers’ used brine and fracking fluid, which is inserted into deep injection wells. Check the StateImpact Pennsylvania website tomorrow morning for a report on Ohio’s injection sites, and one location’s tie to earthquakes.

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