INTERVIEW

The hidden treasure that is the Burket Shale

Gregory Wrightstone, Owner, Wrightstone
Energy Consulting
Today we are discussing the yet-untapped potential of the Burket
with Gregory Wrightstone of Wrightstone Energy Consulting.
The incredibly successful Marcellus shale along with the
underlying Utica shale, which was recently reported to hold
as much as 20 times more dry natural gas as was previously
believed tend to overshadow the shallower Burket-Geneseo
shale, which is the black organic rich shale that lies immediately
on top of the Tully Limestone, and is an Upper Devonian formation.
The play is in an early stage of development but it is already believed that it could be classified as a
super-giant field holding 30 Tcf of dry gas or more.
Monica Thomas (Shale Gas International): We are here to talk about the Burket / Geneseo
Shale. I understand these are two sections of the same formation am I correct in thinking
that?
Gregory Wrightstone (Wrightstone Energy Consulting ): Theyre equivalent formations in
other words the accepted terminology across most of Pennsylvania and West Virginia is the Burket,
whereas the same formation in North-West Pennsylvania and New York is Geneseo. So they are
laterally equivalent.

MT: You chose to talk about the Burket at the recent Hart Energy Developing
Unconventionals DUG East conference. What is so important about this shale that the
industry should take notice?
GW: Well, there have been around 90 wells that have been completed as producers to date. And many
of those wells had significant and high production rates. Some of them as high as over a Bcf of gas in

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their first 6 months of production.

The analysis indicates that recoverable resources from the Burket will exceed 30 Tcf from the core
areas that are identified. Which qualifies it as a super-giant gas field. Super giant being 30 Tcf or
greater, which in any other area of the world would be extremely significant, but because it is located
in the Appalachian basin its overwhelmed by its big brother the Marcellus and now the Utica shale.
So, its incredible that we have a super-giant reservoir this close to the north-eastern gas markets.

MT: You mentioned that the Burket is being overshadowed by the Marcellus. Would you be
able to draw a comparison between the Burket and the Marcellus and Utica?
GW: The Utica is difficult to assess at this time since and this is true particularly for the dry gas
Utica it is so early in the play development. That part of the play is still in its infancy, so the decline
curves for these wells havent been well-established - but have been for the Marcellus, which is
further along in the play development.
The Burket is also in its infancy but if we just look at the initial production into line in the southwest core area of the Burket, those wells average about 750 Mcf of gas in their first 6 months of the
production data. And that compares to a little bit over 1 Bcf in the same time-frame for the Marcellus
shale wells. So the production data indicates that the Burket is not quite as good as the Marcellus in
its best area.
In the northern core area, the Burket wells average about half a Bcf in their first 6 months production,
compared to about 1.1 Bcf from the underlying Marcellus.
So the Burket has very good production rates but significantly less than the Marcellus. Hence
companies prefer to spend their drilling and completion dollars on the Marcellus rather than the
Burket in many of the areas.

MT: Could you explain where Burket shale lies in relation to the Marcellus?
GW: The Burket is just above the Marcellus and ranges from less than 100 ft above the Marcellus
to about 800 ft above it moving from west to east in the Appalachian basin. So in the western
area the Burket, in the best areas, lies about 200 ft above the Marcellus. Therefore one of the main
concerns in this area may be that there is frack communication between the overlying Burket and the
underlying Marcellus, which may complicate completions in those areas.
The Burket ranges from 4,500 ft in depth to more than 7,000 ft in depth for the deepest part of the
basin, and since its fairly close to the Marcellus, drilling depths are similar to those of the Marcellus.

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MT: How similar are these two shales? Can exploration techniques used on the Marcellus
also be adopted for the Burket?
GW: I call the Burket the little brother of the Marcellus for a number of reasons. It seems to have
been deposited in similar depositional environments; theyre both located immediately above
limestone, they both have been successfully completed with similar fracking technologies with
large amounts of water and sand. So the technology to both explore , develop and complete these
two shales are nearly identical, for both the Marcellus and the Burket.

MT: That sounds like good news for exploration companies. Also, if they are located in the
same geographical area, then if a later development of the Burket takes place, operators
could use the same infrastructure that is currently built around the Marcellus.
GW: Thats true. And the best parts of the Burket overlie some of the better parts of the Marcellus as
well. So we will be able to access the Burket perhaps even utilising existing pads, existing roads and
pipelines.

MT: You mentioned, however, that there would be challenges?

GW: The complicating factor is in the south-west area, where the Burket is not separated from the
Marcellus with a large interval. There is a possibility of communication between the two zones, and
if the Burket is not completed at the same time as the underlying Marcellus, in that area, a later
completion attempt on the Burket may possibly be compromised, and frack down to the underlying
Marcellus.

I mean, in fracture theory, the frack

Analysis indicates that recoverable
goes where it wants. And when you
resources from the Burket will
are in a virgin pressure, the frack will
exceed 30 Tcf from the core areas.
tend to go up a little bit but if youve
already produced and fracked the
underlying Marcellus and produced for 10 years, then there will be a low-pressure sink, which alters
the stress regime and alters where the frack might go. The frack might be compromised and not be
as effective as if it was completed at the same time as the Marcellus.
Some companies have elected to complete the Burket in a stack pattern at the same time as the
Marcellus and those wells appear to be performing very well.

MT: So does that mean that, optimally, companies should attempt to explore both of these
formations at the same time?

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GW: Yes, but, companies dont have unlimited capital and they may elect to go for the higherperforming Marcellus wells now, instead of spending their precious capital expenditure dollars on a
possibly-lower-performing Burket. Every company is driven by stock price and performance potential
of the wells, so there would be a desire on many companies part to only pursue their highestperforming wells, which may lead many companies to only complete the Marcellus at this time.

MT: How big an interest in the Burket is there now? How many companies are carrying out
exploration work on these deposits?
GW: We saw an upturn in drilling in 2014 but that was before the significant decrease in natural gas
pricing in the north-east. We saw that permitting in 2014 more than doubled from the year before. Its
unclear what the downturn will do in 2015 to permitting, but there have been 19 companies that have
drilled and completed productive Burket wells. The leader is EQT, which had completed 60 producing
Burket wells, as of April, and theyre planning another 40 wells for 2015. Or had been.

MT: What do you think will happen in the next couple of years to the Burket shale?
GW: Were driven by natural gas prices for the most part throughout much of the basin - and the
Burket would be very similar. There is virtually no oil production in the Appalachian basin from the
unconventional reservoirs. Some of the reservoirs have large liquid production but it would be in the
form of a condensate and ethane that would be stripped out of the gas stream.
So our economics here are driven predominantly by natural gas pricing which has been significantly
impacted by capacity restraints and pipelines to take the gas away from the area.

MT: Do you think this is likely to change? A lot of people are pinning their hopes on the LNG
terminals coming online and Sabine Pass is due to come online later this year. Do you think
that natural gas prices are going to significantly shift as a result?
GW: The recent presentations I heard at DUG East indicated that the big LNG terminals wont be
coming online until 2019 or 2020. So thats another several years of low pricing. We do have an upside
in natural-gas-fired electricity being generated and also a number of large pipelines to take gas to the
north into the New Englands and south into the Carolinas.
The Burket development will be tied directly to natural gas pricing. There will be continued
development of the Burket but it will be tempered by the commodity prices.

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MT: Can you tell us some more about your company Wrighstone Energy Consulting and
what services you provide to clients who may be interested in exploring the Burket shale?
GW: Were an Appalachian-focused energy consulting company focused on geologic and production
analysis and we provide complete database and mapping for the primary shales in the Appalachian
basin. We combine geologic mapping with available production data to identify the highest-performing
areas for each of the shales.

MT: Last week brought the news of a new study which shows that there might be as much
as 20 times more potentially recoverable gas reserves in the Utica shale than previously
thought. Would you care to comment on it?
GW: They reported that there would be likely
nearly 800 Tcf of recoverable gas from the Utica,
which compares similarly to the Marcellus shale,
which is 500-800 Tcf in recoverable reserves.
I think it would help your readers to understand;
if you look at the worlds largest natural gas
fields, back in 2005 the largest field in the world
was North Field/South Pars, in Iran, which holds
1,400 Tcf. The second-largest gas field in the
world was the Urengoy field in Russia with 222
Tcf. So the Utica and the Marcellus are both
on the order of four times the size as the next
largest field in the entire world.
A super-giant field is one considered to have 30
Tcf or more. So Im proposing that for the Utica
and the Marcellus we should establish a new category: something that is 500 Tcf or more instead
of a super-giant, we should be calling it a mega-giant or something like that. There are only three
fields in the world that are of this size and two of them are right here in the Appalachian basin.

MT: So one could say that with the gas prices being where they are, the Appalachian basin
operators are the victims of their own success.
GW: Theres large demand but the problem where we are is that there is not enough capacity to take
it away. And there is large demand around the world but, again, theres not a mechanism in place
right now to get this extremely low-cost gas to Europe and Asia.

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MT: In your opinion, what would have to change to improve this situation?
GW: I believe that we need to have a more co-operative government in Washington DC to advance
exporting LNG overseas. Weve seen the Obama administration dragging their feet on issuing permits.
In addition we would like to see less regulatory delays in permitting for natural-gas-fired electricity
generation, which should be an easy fix for companies, because weve got so much natural gas here
and we have a large electrical grid system, but we are seeing a lot of regulatory and permitting
delays for both of those situations.
Published: 20th July 2015

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