Industry Experts See No Ceiling For Appalachian Production

As reported by NGI’s Shale Daily on June 4, many descended upon Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on Wednesday for the first day of Hart Energy’s Developing Unconventional Gas (DUG) East Conference, where representatives from industry leaders discussed recent industry trends occurring in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Of the speakers on Wednesday, Range Resources Corp.’s CEO Jeffrey Ventura, Randall Wright, President of the consulting firm Wright & Co., Inc., were most notable, discussing the explosive and unparalleled growth in the Appalachian Basin in the past decade. Range CEO Jeffrey Ventura attributed Range’s growth in the past 10 years to expanding pipeline infrastructure and the wealth of knowledge that it has acquired through years of exploration and production, but noted that the Utica Shale, Marcellus and Upper Devonian formations were responsible for helping Range to assemble an asset base that it expects will grow the company’s current reserves by seven to ten times. President Randall Wright mirrored these observations by noting that a new, advanced learning curve, developed through years of experience resulting in more efficient practices by operators has led to an increase of thousands of dollars in property value as well as vast increase in production from 1.5 bcf/d in 2007 to 15 bcf/d this month. The DUG East conference concluded on Thursday, June 5 at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.