Energy Environmental Blog

Moving Appalachian Basin Gas

Written by Greg Russell | May 31, 2014 7:21:02 PM

The Oil & Gas Financial Journal has an interesting article on production and infrastructure growth in the Appalachian Basin.  "We begin with a brief recap of how quickly gas production has grown in Marcellus/Utica, and how the regional and interregional pipeline distribution network has had to play a very challenging game of catch-up. As recently as 2010, gas production in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio totaled less than 1.7 Bcf/d (according to projections from Bentek); this month (May 2014), production in the three-state region is expected to average 14.6 Bcf/d, and by 2019 it is expected to grow by another 33%, to almost 22 Bcf/d, as shown below in Figure #1. The strongest growth since 2010 has occurred in the 'dry gas' area in northeastern Pennsylvania where only 270 MMcf/d was being produced in 2010, but 7.8 Bcf/d—yes, nearly 30 times as much—is now being produced, a figure expected to increase to 10.4 Bcf/d by 2019. Production over the next few years is expected to rise even faster in the 'wet gas' areas (wet refers to the gas’s high concentrations of natural gas liquids) of southwestern Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, and West Virginia. In those areas, production has risen from 530 MMcf/d in 2010 to 3.5 Bcf/d now, and is expected to more than double over the next five years, to 7.6 Bcf/d by 2019."