How Long is a Shale Well Life

There are too many factors involved to know. The life varies by geology and economics,

Are you sure they didn't block them in due to stagnant low price for gas?

I was wondering if that was the case. But to pull out all that compressor station tanks, plumbing, compressor, injection device and leave nothing except the small shed with the satellite dish on it, seems dollar foolish if they are coming back someday. The labor to tear this down would have been quite an expense.

Anyone know if the shale reservoirs can be used as a storage well? I see the well site itself is completely intact - all brine tanks still in place - only the compressor and conditioning equipment for hook up to the Columbia gas line has been removed. The road to the compressor station has already started to grow grass on it, but the well site road is definitely still used, but there are some very old oil wells (stripper wells) on it too.

Good question, but almost impossible to give you an exact answer as there are so many reasons why a well stops producing.

the local area information gathered from drilling test wells, a production company will know the well geology of the ground and by using a variety of methods, know the size and volume of the gas pocket or pockets. The decision to drill and turn it into a production well is then based on economics, cost of drilling, the cost of the infrastructure to harvest and transport the gas and the profit they will make.

The quality and calorific value of the gas will also play a part too. This will decide the price of the gas.

As for longevity of the well.. all dependent of the size of the gas pocket. Extracting the gas depends on downhole pressure and if they can suck the gas.. so yes if the gas is in a porous rock, the pocket is large and the pressure is high enough, then these super wells can be sucked dry in a short time.

Do they make money.. Oh yeah and then some! The cost of drilling has dropped, as so many drilling companies are now fighting for work, steel piping costs are being undercut by cheap Japaneses and Chinese imports, so production and infrastructure costs have now dropped considerably.

From experience using gas as the first option for lifting well fluid out of wells, this option typically last about 2 to 3 years, where the well is a gas and oil producer and rather than install in the well and expensive submersible pump, gas lift equipment which is inexpensive and easy to operate is installed.

Only when the gas pressure drops indicating very little gas in the well, is the well worked over, the gas lift equipment is pulled and an ESP is installed to lift to the surface the well fluid.

Okay. The well is a gas well - never heard of any oil from the Marcellus. Set up had tanks to catch brine, but no oil separation tanks and definitely no jack - just gas pressure flow. This was drilled at the height of the new multiple hole/directional drilling boom and the rig came 2000 miles to get to the NW Pa fields, so, no, at that time, the drilling costs were very high. They drilled in 4 of the 6 hole wells very close to here in a 2 year period. One was never completed (not fracked). The other 2 are still on line, and still being visited daily by a well tender. This one appears to be forgotten - no more well tender visits - the grass is taking over the road already. (this one may be a dud, or is it as James Stewart suggests - just a shut in until prices come back up)

Thank you for your input. I was a well analyst for 11 years when all the wells were conventionally drilled and into traditional sand formations, so I know about reservoirs and such, but not that much about shale reservoirs. I was hoping to get some local input from others in this part of the world who have been observing the current batch of wells with the new drilling technique, and new reservoirs. No one around here is offering much details yet on these newer wells, so I feel left out of my old occupation. Only people talking around here are the stripper oil well folks, and that's old news, very very old news around here. Pretty glum out look for them. Shutting more wells in every day.

Sadly, the best oil in the U.S. (as far as being extremely good quality paraffinic oil with little to no naphthenes content), comes from Pennsylvania crude. I hear in some instances, though, some of the well down around Ozona, Texas had some similar qualities, not at all like the sour stuff coming up in the proper Permian Basin. My brother-in-law used to drive tanker trucks in the run between Ozona - San Angelo, and he said there was this one well where the oil coming out of the ground resembled golden honey, and was sweet smelling. We wasn't even drinking that day when he told me, so I found it believable. Most of the oil around where I grew up, would knock you off your feet if not downright kill you with H2S fumes.

Yeah - we've got the sweet stuff here. Best example I've encountered - come into Bradford Pa from the south on a foggy morning on Route US 219 sometime. Coming down the hill into the valley you get swept up in a totally wonderful smell, if you are into oil, or a hideous one, if you are an environmentalist. The catch and separate tanks are vented to atmosphere, and there is a number of large banks of them just off the highway on the western side from top of the hill to the bottom. That's the famous, at least in western Pa, Music Mountain field.

Funny how there is always someone to object to the smell of money.

Just had a bad thought on my way back to work after lunch - that dirt road to the compressor station was always plowed in winter and the 6 miles of dirt road leading to it. That was my primary ride route for biking in the winter. Now that is gone and the oil wells along the 6 miles before that road are shut in - no reason for anyone to plow the dirt roads - guess the oil and gas price slump is going to affect me as well. Lower fuel prices are great for me, but I may have to ride on the main roads this winter because we do get plenty of the white stuff here from Lake Erie. Don't see much of that, do you?

Due to El Nino, we had a 20" snow last winter, just before Christmas as I recall. Average temperature in Lubbock, TX is 72 °F. It's just the extremes that are extreme.

It is nearly a Midwest climate here due to the 3300 ft elevation, just a little bit hotter and considerably drier most of the time. You're right, most winters nothing more than a dusting of snow a few times, then it's over. Always cold the week between Christmas and New Year's Day for some reason, sometimes a bitter north wind blows.

The way shale gas was explained to me is it's like how Acetylene is dissolved in a permeable solid media inside the tank.

When the tank is full it will supply good pressure and flow but as it drains down the rate that the gas can work its way out of the solid drops off and after the a while the average flow gets pretty slow.

It will never fully deplete itself like deflated balloon but at some point the average flow rates drop below what is considered a cost effective return rate for high production methods which in your case those flow rates may have dropped below what was cost effective to justify the compressors and related systems operational costs.

Or as others said they may have just capped the well and are going to let it sit until they get their ransom money.

As for the gear they hauled out I doubt much of it went to scrap. More than likely it went off to be overhauled then will be put back in place someplace else.

In the oil industry spending a few hundred thousand to uproot several millions to tens of millions dollars worth of machinery and relocate it elsewhere is just good business sense.

Yeah - the compressor station didn't go to scrap - it still looked new. They just moved it elsewhere. I'm just shocked at how quickly this well went off line. As I said earlier, no one is talking around here about these wells. If you're not on the "inside" anymore, you're told nothing.