Marcellus Shale Potential Studied
WVU students researching formation’s physical properties
Wheeling Intelligencer
3 June 2011
By Casey Junkins, Staff Writer
MORGANTOWN - Meg Walker-Milani's passion for rocks allows her to help
develop West Virginia's burgeoning Marcellus Shale natural gas industry.
The West Virginia University graduate student joins fellow scholars
Jessica Hayward, Elise Swan and Tom Donahoe in studying the chemical
and physical properties of the shale, which stretches from New York to
Tennessee. The entire rock formation could hold as many as 500 trillion
cubic feet of natural gas, according to industry estimates.
"This research can help us determine where the best gas shale is. It
helps to know how things accumulated, because then you know where to
look and how to best produce it," said Tim Carr, WVU geology professor.
"This research should help us better understand the reservoir," said
Walker-Milani, a WVU Department of Geology and Geography graduate
student.
As part of her thesis, Walker-Milani focuses on learning how the rocks
were formed.
She said, "I've had a lot of fun conducting this research. I've gotten
to see all of West Virginia, including little nooks and crannies that
you would never see unless you were trying to get lost."
To conduct her analyses of the rocks, Walker-Milani uses a piece of
equipment called a spectral scintillometer, which measures the amount
of thorium, uranium and potassium present in the rock.
"In West Virginia, the Marcellus hasn't been studied as much as it has
been in New York and Pennsylvania, so it was a chance to dig a little
deeper into the details of the rocks here in West Virginia," she said.
"I was drawn to sedimentology because you can tell so much about a
particular paleoenvironment that existed millions of years ago just by
studying the rocks in detail."
After all of the data is collected, Walker-Milani will work on creating
a log curve to correlate to subsurface data. This way, her
interpretation of the rocks can be compared with subsurface well data.
Walker-Milani's advisor is Richard Smosna, a WVU geology professor
whose research interests focus on sedimentology, stratigraphy and
petroleum geology.
"We need to know a lot more about the physical, chemical and geological
make-up of the Marcellus Shale in order to properly assess its
petroleum potential. The importance of Meg's study is that in eastern
West Virginia, the Marcellus is well exposed at the surface for
examination," said Smosna.
In August, Walker-Milani will graduate with her master's degree in
geology and go on to work for Shell Oil Co., a company that has leased
acreage for development in the formation.
With funding from the Energy Corporation of America, Hayward, Swan and
Donahoe gained access to essential resources necessary to conduct their
work.
Hayward is researching the ash beds within the Marcellus formation.
Using rock core samples, he is trying to identify the ages of each
layer within the formation and the length of time it takes for the
shale to deposit.
Swan focuses on how faults underneath and within the Marcellus affect
the location and extraction of natural gas.
Using modeling techniques, she can determine how faults have formed
over time.
"Faults can provide natural cracks within the Marcellus, which have the
possibility of helping in extraction, or they reach the surface and may
indicate where the gas has traveled through the faults and escaped at
the surface, which would mean no gas would be found in that location,"
she said.
"This research may help to define the usefulness of advanced
technologies to future exploration and development of natural gas
resources in the region," added Donahoe, who applies software to
interpret subsurface structures, including folds, faults and fractures
in within the shale.