Improving the Availability and Delivery of Critical Information for Tight Gas Resource Development in the Appalachian Basin

This three-year U.S. DOE-sponsored project, begun in fall 2005 by the West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey and the Pennsylvania Geological and Topographic Survey, is providing public access to well-specific data and region-wide products for six significant, regional, tight gas accumulations in the central Appalachian Basin.

It is expected that the improved understanding of these reservoirs will enable operators to expand their resource recoverability through more cost-effective exploration of new areas and more efficient infill drilling and recompletion programs in existing fields.

Via the Internet, this project is providing easier access to scanned well records, scanned wireline logs, digitized wireline logs, production data, core analysis reports, digital photographs of cores, scanned maps and cross-sections, and related data on tight gas plays through an interactive website. Wireline logs have been scanned and database entries have been updated for use in system queries.

Two main objectives to this project have been to:

• Collect a broad range of data and information in public records and published sources and convert it to digital format. The work has concentrated on the Lower Mississippian/Upper Devonian Berea/Murrysville gas play, the Upper Devonian Venango, Bradford, and Elk gas plays, and the Lower Silurian Tuscarora play in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and the Lower Silurian Medina/"Clinton" gas play in Pennsylvania.
• Design and implement an on-line, interactive digital and geospatial website that consolidates a broad range of existing information about tight gas reservoirs, and has the potential to be extended to any tight gas reservoir in the future. This website includes scanned images of logs, selected digitized wireline logs, photomicrographs of thin-sections, digital photographs of core slabs, selected basic well data, and digital regional maps and cross-sections.

Partial support from U.S. DOE is appreciated. DOE Award Number: DE-FC26-05NT42661. 

Download the project's Final Report (bookmarked version):

• via one PDF:
       Final Report (PDF, 7.71 MB)
     
• via smaller sections:
       Main Body (PDF, 2.85 MB)
       Appendix A - Appalachian Basin Tight Gas Interactive Mapping System: Layer Attribute Descriptions (PDF, 4.97 MB)
      Note: This PDF is also divided and downloadable from the IMS application's "User Essentials" Layer Attribute information.
       Appendix B - Appalachian Basin Tight Gas Reservoirs: Screen Shots of the Web-based Application (PDF, 2.70 MB)
       Appendix C - Appalachian Basin Tight Gas Reservoirs: Interactive Mapping System Metadata (PDF, 24.3 KB)