Carbon Natural Gas Targets Chattanooga Shale in TN
Carbon Natural Gas Company, an independent oil and gas exploration and production company, owns, operates and develops oil and gas properties in the Appalachian, Illinois and Ventura Basin areas of the U.S. Most of the wells they own and operate are conventional. However, the company is dipping its toe into unconventional shale as well. Yesterday Carbon issued a press release to announce they have formed a subsidiary called Carbon Appalachian Company, with backing from two unnamed institutional investors. The new venture has access to a whopping $100 million to get them going, with $20 million of that going to the purchase of “natural gas producing properties and related facilities” located in Tennessee. Currently the existing wells just purchased by Carbon in TN produce a measly 3.6 million cubic feet per day (Mcf/d) of mostly natural gas. You paid $20M for that?! Aaahh, there’s more to the story. The acreage that comes with the wells is located in the Chattanooga Shale–a shale layer much shallower than the Marcellus or Utica. Carbon plans to drill horizontal wells in the Chattanooga. Which got us to thinking: How active is the Chattanooga? Who else is drilling there? Is there shale drilling in TN? We found some answers…
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EQT is feeling bullish about natural gas drilling in the northeast for 2017. The company has just released its 2017 operational forecast. What do we notice? First off, they plan to spend $1.5 billion next year, most of which ($1.3 billion) will be used to drill and complete new wells. That’s a whopping 50% increase from spending $1 billion this year. The next thing we notice is what type of wells they intend to drill: 119 Marcellus wells (76 in PA and 43 in WV); 81 Upper Devonian wells, which will be drilled on the same pads as deeper Marcellus wells, but only in PA; and 7 “deep Utica” exploratory wells. EQT also reworked a midstream deal with Williams in the Ohio Valley. Below are the exciting details of what’s ahead for EQT in 2017, including a second announcement from EQT Midstream about what’s ahead for the pipeline subsidiary, including details on how much they plan to spend on the Mountain Valley pipeline project in the coming year…
One week ago MDN brought you the news of EQT’s monster Utica Shale well drilled in Greene County, PA–the single highest producing on-shore shale well on the planet with initial production (IP) of 72.9 million cubic feet of natural gas per day (see 
The third shale play in the northeast–or more accurate the Appalachian region–is often referred to as the Upper Devonian layer. An article in Ohio Gas & Oil Magazine calls it “the little brother to Utica & Marcellus.” An apt description. The article is full of interesting facts. Fact #1: the more accurate name is the Burket/Geneseo Shale. Fact #2: 85 horizontal shale wells have now been drilled in the Burket/Geneseo. Fact #3: Early indicators are that Burket/Geneseo wells are not nearly as productive as Utica and Marcellus wells, but since the layer is stacked over top of the other two, why not drill it too? Here’s a few more interesting pickings about the Utica/Marcellus’ little brother…
It seems as if “out of the blue” the Upper Devonian Shale (UD) has popped up on the radar screen–quite suddenly and in quite a big way. The Upper Devonian is located a few hundred feet above the Marcellus Shale layer in the northeastern U.S. Over the past few weeks, MDN has highlighted stories of drillers expanding their UD drilling programs–including CONSOL, Rex Energy, Range Resources and EQT Corporation (see