Lower Huron Shale - Huron Shale Map

The Lower Huron Shale Formation

What is the Huron Shale? The Lower Huron Shale is a natural gas field located deep below the earths surface in extreme southeast Ohio, West Virginia, and Northeast Kentucky. The Huron shale is a part of the Appalachin Basin which links to the Chattanooga Shale & Marcellus Shale. Geologists have known for a long time that the Huron Shale existed but extracting the natural gas from the Huron formation was very costly. The recent rise in Natural Gas prices has sparked a big interest in this West Virginia shale field and many companies have been leasing land from landowners for the right to explore and potentially drill in the Huron Shale area.

The Lower Huron Shale has a wide range of thickness, ranging from 200 - 2,000 feet thick. A company called Equitable Resources was first to really explore this shale deposit. Equitable drills many of their wells in the Huron Shale with air using one horizontal leg or multiple lateral horizontal legs. Their multi stage fracturing techniques use firm sand or vapor at very high pressures.

Typical Huron Shale wells cost around 1.1-1.2 million dollars for a 3,400 foot lateral well. This includes up to nine stages of fracturing.

Exco Resources ( XCO ) Huron Shale Map

Huron Shale Map

Exco Resources ( XCO ) Huron Shale Map

Source - Exco Resources ( XCO )

Below are companies drilling in the Huron Shale - Lower Huron Shale company stocks

Discuss Stocks - http://stockstobuy.org

Equitable Resources EQT - The Huron and Berea update you know kind of a story that we drilled about 821 wells now in that program since the inception of the horizontal air drilling a few years ago a third of our production now comes from air drill horizontal Huron Berea wells and of course in 2006, 0% came from horizontal air drilled wells.

To remind you of the scope of the play we reported 6.7 Tcfe of 3P and an estimate of 13 Tcfe of resource potential in the Huron, Berea. As I reported there in the last couple of quarters our latest application of new technology is the extended lateral design improvement in product technologies now allowing for 22 or more stages and so we have lengthened our laterals.

To date we have successfully drilled and completed 5 extended lateral wells doubling our footage of play from 3,000 feet to 6,000 feet. With this improvement, we believe we are doubling reserves and productivity per well for less than 40% more cost approximately 1.6 Bcf per well for about $1.4 million.

Range Resources RRC - During the third quarter 2009, Range's Appalachian division continued to focus on its key coal bed methane, shale and tight gas sand drilling projects in the Nora area of Virginia. During the quarter, Range drilled five horizontal Huron Shale wells, two horizontal Big Lime wells and one horizontal Berea well. Year-to-date, 15 horizontal wells have been completed in these three target zones, of which 10 are currently online and producing on par with expectations. In addition, during the third quarter of 2009, 71 coal bed methane and 20 vertical tight gas sand wells were drilled in the Nora field.

CNX Gas CXG - Huron Shale: In the Huron Shale during the third quarter, CNX Gas drilled one additional horizontal well in eastern Kentucky. A total of two Huron wells have been drilled in 2008. The rig performing this drilling has returned to Tennessee to drill Chattanooga Shale wells for the remainder of the year. CNX Gas is building out gathering and compression in this area, with an expected in-service date of March 2009. CNX Gas has 198,000 net acres in the Huron Shale.

Chesapeake Energy CHK - Cheasapeake announces it is drilling in the Huron Shale - Marcellus and Lower Huron Shales (Kentucky, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York): Chesapeake owns a leasehold position of 1.6 million net acres in the Marcellus and Lower Huron Shale plays. The company has drilled 26 vertical and horizontal Marcellus and Lower Huron Shale wells to date and plans to drill approximately 165 vertical and horizontal Marcellus and Lower Huron Shale wells in 2008 and 2009.

Continental Resources CLR - CLR is drilling in the Huron Shale formation - Continental is currently drilling the first of four wells planned to test the Rhinestreet and Lower Huron shales in Gallia County, OH.

Exco Resources XCO - Exco XCO is a nice acreage position in the Huron Natural Gas Field - ( From Seeking Alpha ) Huron. We have about 76% of our 120,000 net acres in Huron shale in West Virginia that's held by production, not a strong point for us. Moving forward with our plans on drilling some horizontal wells in Huron and we believe that this area holds at least 1 to 2 TCF of potential reserves. Update - Exco has spud 9 wells so far and plans to drill 4 more huron shale wells for 2008. Exco has completed five wells so far.

Penn Virginia PVA - Penn Virginia is an operator drilling in the Huron Shale - During the third quarter, PVA drilled eight (5.0 net) wells in Appalachia, including five (2.5 net) multi-lateral HCBM development wells and three (2.5 net) Lower Huron Shale exploratory wells. All of the HCBM wells were successful, with one of the Lower Huron Shale wells drilled in Mason County, West Virginia having been completed and under evaluation and the other two Lower Huron Shale wells waiting on completion.

Site Map