American Oil and Gas Reporter - January 2012 - 67

Oil & Gas Shales

Utica Shale
The Utica Shale underlies the Marcellus
and is an even thicker and more geographically extensive Devonian-aged formation, spanning more than 110 million
acres across eight states and into Canada.
Initial development activity is centered
in eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania,
with Chesapeake Energy Corp. the largest
leaseholder and most active driller to
date. Figure 4 shows a map of Utica well
drilling activity in Ohio since 2010.
"Chesapeake Chief Executive Officer
Aubrey McClendon has been quoted saying, 'The Utica is the biggest thing economically to hit Ohio, since maybe the
plow,'" laughs Braziel. "I think one reason
everyone is so excited about the Utica is
that it looks and smells so much like the
Eagle Ford, with three separate windows
of dry gas, wet gas and crude oil. But as
we learned in earlier shale gas plays, you
have to be careful about extrapolating
results from one play to another. Time
will tell how similar the Eagle Ford really
is to the Utica as operators get more
wells drilled and completed."

FIGURE 1
Eagle Ford Annual Crude Oil Production
16,000,000
13,835,871

14,000,000
12,000,000

Bbl

10,000,000
8,000,000
6,000,000

4,374,792

4,000,000
2,000,000
787

793

849

1,091

2004

2005

2006

2007

130,802

308,139

2008

2009

0
2010

JanuaryOctober
2011

Year

Oil Production (bbl)

FIGURE 2
Eagle Ford Annual Condensate Production
18,000,000

16,868,277

16,000,000
14,000,000
12,000,000
Bbl

10,000,000
7,137,513

8,000,000
6,000,000
4,000,000
2,000,000

839,490
12,132

19,664

83,744

2007

2008

0
2006

2009

2010

Year

Condensate Production (bbl)

JanuaryOctober
2011

FIGURE 3
Eagle Ford Annual Natural Gas Production
250.0
212

200.0

150.0
Bcf

both the economy and national security.
"After decades of declining oil production, the U.S. is experiencing its third
consecutive year of oil production growth,"
Braziel points out. "BENTEK projects
that by 2016, U.S. oil production will be
2.5 million bbl/d higher than it was in
2010. At the same time this resurgence
of domestic oil is taking place, production
from Canada's oil sands areas in Alberta
also is growing significantly. About 1
million bbl/d of this incremental Canadian
production will be transported to U.S.
markets. Taken together, U.S. and Canadian oil production is projected to return
to levels not seen since 1973. This remarkably sudden turnaround raises the
prospect that the U.S. oil market may
provide a domestic solution to what many
believe is an excessive dependence on
oil from overseas."
Braziel is quick to add that this projection does not include potential new
crude oil supplies from the Utica, Heath,
Tuscaloosa or other emerging plays. "If
all these plays pan out, foreign imports
could go away," he remarks. "And this
production increase is mostly onshore,
which has wonderful implications for energy security."

110

100.0

50.0
19
1

0.0
2008

2009

2010
Year

January-October
2011

Gas Well Gas Production (Bcf)

JANUARY 2012 67

American Oil and Gas Reporter - January 2012

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