Pennsylvania Drillers Are Doing More With Less

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

May 31, 2012 | 11:03 AM

The Post-Gazette takes a deeper look at the Energy Information Administration drilling data we told you about yesterday.
The paper’s conclusion: drillers are extracting more gas with fewer wells, due to improved technology.

Prior to 2009, thousands of vertical — or “conventional” — wells across Pennsylvania produced about 400 million to 500 million cubic feet of gas per day, according to the study.
Two years later, with the boom in full swing and horizontal drilling the common technique, the state produced about 3.5 billion cubic feet per day.
The preference for horizontal drills was starkly seen in 2011: almost 2,000 new horizontal wells were drilled, whereas only about 500 vertical wells were started.
The study also offered some insight into drilling trends for 2012. Low natural gas prices — and the lure of more lucrative gas in Ohio — have already prompted a year-over-year slowdown in the number of Pennsylvania rigs.
In the first quarter of 2012, drilling started on 618 new gas wells, down from the 700 seen during the same period last year.