To Drill or Not to Drill?

To Drill or Not to Drill?


By: Grace Herpel


Is there a good side to drilling for energy in the Marcella Shale? Robert Larivee Ph.D thinks so, in his presentation at Focus Frostburg on Wednesday April, 20 2011 he explained. Among many of Dr. Larivee arguments for drilling he pointed out it is the cleanest and leaves the smallest carbon foot print of all the fuels we are using now.


The Marcella Shale spans from Southern New York to Kentucky spanning through Pennsylvania and western Maryland and Allegany County were Frostburg State is located. In Allegany County the Marcella shale is 9,000 feet or 2 miles below the surface. “The Marcella Shale contains a huge amount of natural gas about 500 trillion cubic feet” . In one of Dr. Larivee slides he presented showed what the US Energy Information Administration has estimated. The USEIA has done a rough estimate about 827 trillion cubic feet of natural gas is contained in the shale, based on a 10% recovery rate which Dr.Larivee says “is very conservative”. This amount of gas is equivalent to 86 billion barrels of oil or 12 years of energy usage at the United State current rate.


How do we get this immense amount of energy that is far below the surface of the earth? Dr. Larviee explained the three step process that is used to extract the natural gas from deep in the earth Horizontal Drilling, Casing, and Fracting . Horizontal drilling is when the company drills down 1 mile and then the drill turns at varies speeds to go horizontally to tap into the Hydrfrac zone in the shale. Ground water is in the first 1,000 feet and cement casing must be placed around the hole so water does not get down into the hydrofract zone. Then the last step of drilling occurs what Dr.Larivee called the “the scary word fracting” which he described as a mix of 95.5% of water and sand gel mix with a small amount 0.5% of chemicals that are commonly found in household products . Dr.Larivee then explained that most of the water is pumped out of the drill zone. He then explained a real problem which is where the water is removed to after it is pumped out of the drill zone. At the end of his presentation Dr. Larivee he opened for questions he was then bombarded with questions against the drilling. What about when the joints in the ground break and the chemical water gets through? What will happen to where we live? Most of all is this actually safe?