Marcellus production led U.S. gas fields in 2013, EIA says

Jon Hurdle

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Jon is an experienced journalist who has covered a wide range of general and business-news stories for national and local media in the U.S. and his native U.K. As a former Reuters reporter, he spent several years covering the early stages of Pennsylvania’s natural gas fracking boom and was one of the first national reporters to write about the effects of gas development on rural communities. Jon trained as a general news reporter with a British newspaper chain and later worked for several business-news organizations including Bloomberg News and Market News International, covering topics including economics, bonds, currencies and monetary policy. Since 2011, he has been a freelance writer, contributing Philadelphia-area news to The New York Times; covering economics for Market News, and writing stories on the environment and other subjects for a number of local outlets including StateImpact. He has written two travel guidebooks to the European Alps; lived in Australia, Switzerland, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, and visited many countries including Ethiopia, Peru, Taiwan, and New Zealand. Outside of work hours, Jon can be found running, birding, cooking, and, when weather permits, gardening in the back yard of a Philadelphia row home where he lives with his partner, Kate.

April 24, 2015 | 4:21 PM

The Marcellus Shale of Pennsylvania and West Virginia produced far more natural gas in 2013 than any other field in the United States, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said on Friday.

A natural gas well in Lycoming County. Wells like this are helping to make the Marcellus Shale the biggest gas-production field in the U.S.

The EIA report said that Marcellus operators produced 2.86 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas in 2013, sharply higher than the Barnett Shale of Texas, with 1.95 tcf, which was the most-productive field the last time the survey was conducted in 2009.

The Marcellus, which underlies about two-thirds of Pennsylvania and most of West Virginia, also contains many more gas reserves than the Barnett field, the EIA said, citing an earlier report in which it estimated the Marcellus had 64.9 tcf at the end of 2013 compared with 26.0 tcf in the Texas field.

The EIA called the Marcellus a “notable addition” to its top 10 fields, which are among 100 for both gas and oil covered by the survey.

“The Marcellus Shale has surpassed the Barnett Shale to become the largest U.S. gas field ranked by proved reserves at the end of 2013,” the EIA’s latest report said.

The latest EIA report follows a biennial assessment by the Potential Gas Committee, a closely watched unit of the Colorado School of Mines, which said on April 8 that gas reserves in the Atlantic area that includes the Marcellus rose to 833 tcf last year, or some 13 percent higher than in its previous survey in 2012.