Marcellus Shale Gas Drilling - Water Truck and Vacuum Tankers

In early 2008, scientists at Pennsylvania State University and State University of New York at Fredonia estimated that the Marcellus Shale (a Middle Devonian-age black, low density, carbonaceous shale that occurs in the subsurface beneath much of Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York) might contain more than 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Using some of the same horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing methods that had previously been applied in the Barnett Shale of Texas, perhaps 10% of that gas (50 trillion cubic feet) might be recoverable. That volume of natural gas would be enough to supply the entire United States for about two years and have a wellhead value of about one trillion dollars.