Drill Rigs Moved Toward Oil and Wet Gas

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.

November 20, 2012 | 3:18 PM

Drill rigs in the Utica Shale formation have doubled within the past year, according to a report released Tuesday by the Energy Information Administration. The report details what residents of Northeastern Pennsylvania have noticed for some time now, less drilling, with workers moving on to Ohio. The EIA says the growth in new rigs are focused on drilling for oil, rather than natural gas. The Administration cited information from Baker Hughes, an oil field service company based in Houston, TX. Twenty-four out of 28 rigs operating in the Utica today are drilling for oil. (Those 28 rigs account for just 2 percent of active rigs in the U.S.)

With 88 rigs drilling in the Marcellus, the Utica play is still smaller. But the Marcellus has seen a decline from a year ago, down 56 rigs in the dry-gas areas of Northeastern Pennsylvania. The rig-count in the southwestern part, which produces the more profitable wet-gas, has actually increased.
Chesapeake Energy has shifted their focus to Ohio’s Utica Shale. But both Chesapeake and Devon Energy say production hasn’t met their expectations.