USGS: Utica Shale holds 38 Tcf

USGS

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Luke Johnson

 04 October 2012 23:17 GMT

The Utica Shale, one of the most hotly anticipated new unconventional onshore plays, contains about 38 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered, technically recoverable natural gas, according to a new assessment by the US Geological Survey.

The formation - underlying the prolific Marcellus Shale throughout parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and New York - also holds an average of 940 million barrels of oil and about 9 million barrels of natural gas liquids, USGS said in its first assessment of the play.

It is located in the Appalachian basin, the longest-producing petroleum province in the US.

The estimates still pale in comparison to the Marcellus, which holds about 84 Tcf of gas - top among plays the USGS has assessed.

The Utica assessment is…

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