Marcellus Shale Drilling Tests Involve WVU Near Morgantown, WV

Shale drilling tests to start in West Virginia this week

From an Article by Luke Torrance, Pittsburgh Business Times, December 24, 2018

Testing is set to begin this week in West Virginia as part of an effort to advance hydraulic fracturing techniques that would allow the extraction of natural gas to be done more efficiently.

The drilling tests are being carried out by the Marcellus Shale Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (MSEEL), a research partnership between West Virginia University, Northeast Natural Energy, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL).

The tests will seek to improve gas recovery from horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, a method in which rock is fractured by pressurized liquid, releasing the natural gas. They will be carried out near Core, W.Va., which is located about 15 miles northwest of Morgantown.

Previous research by WVU and Northeast Natural Energy led to the creation of stimulation zones that offered the best well sites around natural fractures in the shale. These sites were monitored using seismic and fiber optic distributed temperature and acoustic sensing, a method that is too costly to be used on all wells.

“Therefore, aided by advanced numerical modeling developed by WVU, the project team will compare the use and results of new completion/stimulation techniques at the Core site to the large array of relatively cost-prohibitive techniques used in the Morgantown Industrial Park wells,” according to NETL.

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Man dies from injuries sustained in explosion at MarkWest facility in Washington County, PA

From an Article by Luke Torrance, Pittsburgh Business Times, December 20, 2018

A man who was critically injured in an explosion at the MarkWest facility in Washington County, PA, last week has died, according to the Allegheny County Medical Examiner.

Jeffrey Fisher, 61, of Salem, W.Va., was one of four workers injured last week after an incident near two temporary tanks that were on-site for routine maintenance led to an explosion on December 13th. The men were working at the MarkWest facility in Houston, Pa., which is owned by Marathon Petroleum.

Tagged as: gas production, gas well drilling, marcellus shale, Monongalia County, NETL, Northeast Energy, wv, WVU