Marcellus Shale Advantages And Disadvantages

The Marcellus Shale It is the largest source of natural gas in the United States, and is located in Appalachian basin which stretches from Tennessee to New York and covers West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The Marcellus Shale has a lot of marine sedimentary rock because of the different sea level changes 400 million years ago that deposited minerals. It contains black shale and lighter shale mixed with limestone .It has many benefits, but it comes with disadvantage disadvantages. For humans to get access to the natural gas they have to drill deep into the ground and create a well which can go from 5,000 to 9,000 feet deep. They use a method of drilling called

This is where they put a steel pipe into the ground at around 10,000 feet and turn it 90 degrees so that it is horizontal. Then they send an explosive missile that erupts along the horizontal part to puncture holes through the pipe. They later put a fluid that contains water, sand and other chemicals through the pipe which later goes through the pores of the pipe into the rock. It breaks the rock down and creates cracks leading to the natural gas leaking out through the pipe. There is an average of 5 - 8 million gallon of water used for one Fracking. Vertical drilling is when the pipe goes straight down leading it to only get the natural gas at the end of the pipe which limits it to one area. Horizontal Drilling is more efficient and costly. When you drill horizontally you can have a pipe going along the layer of natural gas leading the well to have more access to natural gas and make it last longer than one vertically. Depending on how long the horizontal pipe is it can have many pores that take in oil. One needs to know where natural gas is and then know the correct area to turn the pipe horizontally. This area is calling the kickoff