Big gas play puts money in Appalachian pockets

Landowners in Appalachia are being offered large sums for drilling rights as energy companies "are risking big money on a bet that this area could produce billions of dollars worth of natural gas," Clifford Krauss of The New York Times reports from Hughesville, Pa. "A frenzy unlike any seen in decades is unfolding here in rural Pennsylvania, and it eventually could encompass a huge chunk of the East, stretching from upstate New York to eastern Ohio and as far south as West Virginia." (Times map, from American Association of Petroleum Geologists)

The object of the frenzy is the hydrocarbon-rich but deeply buried Marcellus Shale, which "has been known for more than a century to contain gas, but it was generally not seen as economical to extract," Krauss writes. "Now, improved recovery technology, sharply higher natural gas prices and strong drilling results in a similar shale formation in north Texas are changing the calculus."

Thomas Murphy, a Penn State extension horticulture specialist, has developed a new specialty in educating landowners how to deal with energy companies. He told Krauss that more than 20 will spend $700 million this year developing the deposit, up to half in Pennsylvania. "The cost to companies for leasing mineral rights jumped from $300 an acre in mid-February to $2,100 now," Krauss reports. "Industry experts say in the last three years companies like Anadarko Petroleum, Chesapeake Energy and Cabot Oil and Gas have leased up to two million acres for drilling in the region, half of that in the last nine months."

For a report on Murphy's work, from Deborah Benedetti of Penn State Outreach magazine, click here. For information on the Marcellus Shale, from the West Virginia Surface Owners Rights Association, click here.