Six Gas Wells Planned for Area

By James Loewenstein, The Daily Review, Towanda, Pa.

Jul. 2–Starting this month, Fortuna Energy Inc. is planning to drill wells at six different sites in western Bradford County to extract natural gas from the potentially very lucrative Marcellus Shale formation, company officials said.

Five of the wells will be in Troy Township and the sixth in Armenia Township, said Mark Scheuerman, Fortuna Energy’s manager for legal and community relations.

While the company hopes the wells will produce gas in commercial quantities, good results from those wells will likely also lead to further drilling in western Bradford County, said Mark Scheuerman, Fortuna Energy’s manager for legal and community relations.

“We’re trying to get a feel for what the prospects are” in that area of the county, Scheuerman said.

Four of the wells have all of the necessary permits, while the other two still need a permit from the state Department of Environmental Protection, said Scheuerman and company President Jim O’Driscoll. The remaining two permits are expected this week or early next week, Scheuerman said.

The company plans to drill all six wells this year, he said.

After a well is drilled, water and sand is injected into the well under high pressure to fracture the shale and access the gas, O’Driscoll said.

The injection of water and sand, which is called “fracturing,” will take place in September or October for the first well, he said.

The fracturing of the last well is expected to take place in early 2009, he said.

The fracturing of the wells will generally take seven to 10 days, he said.

Almost all of the wells will require approximately 2 million gallons of water each during the fracturing process, Fortuna energy officials said. By comparison, a backyard swimming pool on average holds 20,000 gallons of water, according to the Susquehanna River Basin Commission.

Fortuna will withdraw the water it needs from the fracturing process from Catatonk Creek and the Chemung River, which are tributaries of the Susquehanna River, Scheuerman said. However, permits issued by the Basic Commission limit the amount of water that the company can withdraw from the river and creek, so the company will need to transport the water by truck from the river or creek to each well site over a number of days or weeks and store it in tanks at the well site until there is enough water accumulated on site to undertake the fracturing process, Scheuerman said.

The company can withdraw no more than 250,000 gallons per day from the Chemung River and no more than 101,000 gallons per day from the Catatonk Creek, he said.

The drilling and fracturing process for each well will cost up to $4 million, O’Driscoll said.

Gas was struck last month by East Resources Inc. at a location in McNett Township in Lycoming County, just outside the Canton area.

Armenia Township is located just outside of Canton.

Fortuna Energy is based in Horseheads, N.Y., and is the largest producer of natural gas in New York state, the company said.

James Loewenstein can be reached at (570) 265-1633; or e-mail: jloewenstein@thedailyreview.com.

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