Marcellus Shale

1. Marcellus Shale ToreyVanSickle, Aaron Koch Travis Day, Sam Mwangi

2. What is it? • Marcellus Shale is a unit marine sedimentary rock found in Eastern North America that contains massive amounts of untapped natural gas.

3. What is Extracted • the shale may contain enough carbon to support combustion • The more organic-rich black shales can be bituminous but are too old to contain bituminous coal formed from land plants • In petroleum geology, these black shales are an important source rock that filled conventional petroleum reservoirs in overlying formations, are an unconventional shale gas reservoir, and are an impermeable seal that traps underlying conventional natural gas reservoirs. • To the west the formation may produce liquid petroleum; further east heating during deeper burial more than 240 million years ago cracked this oil into gas.

4. How is it extracted • Directional drilling is done to depths of 7,000 to 10,000 ft underground to reach the formation, and then water and an undisclosed mixture of chemicals is pumped into the rock under high pressure in a process known as hydraulic fracturing to release the gas from the low permeability shale

5. Environmental issues Cons • The release to the environment of underground naturally occurring radioactive material through the drilling fluids and equipment • The hydraulic drilling being done also uses a massive amount of surface water which is another major issue. • There have also been reports of natural gas leaking into water supplies.

6. Pros • The drilling brings in a lot of money for the surrounding towns, counties and etc. • The Shale industry also brings in a plethora of jobs for the surrounding communities. • Also statistics show that the burning of this fuel is cleaner than most other fossil fuels.