The mighty Marcellus and Utica shales have carved their legends into Appalachia’s rock. But the shallower Burket Shale quietly lingered, overshadowed and often overlooked.
Today, intrepid Appalachian producers like PennEnergy Resources are tapping into this third resource play with compelling results.
The Upper Devonian Burket, also known as the Genesee or Geneseo Shale, has been tapped across many of the same regions in Pennsylvania and West Virginia where Marcellus development has occurred.
“[The Burket] overlies the Marcellus and is incredibly economic,” said PennEnergy Resources President Ben Bates at Hart Energy’s DUG Appalachia Conference & Expo in Pittsburgh.
EnCap-backed PennEnergy holds over 180,000 acres across Beaver, Butler and Armstrong counties, Pennsylvania, around 30 minutes north of Pittsburgh.
PennEnergy is producing 600 MMcfe/d from around 450 wells, with about 30% of production and revenue stemming from NGLs.
Over the next five years, PennEnergy plans to ramp production by 50% to around 900 MMcfe/d.
“We’ll do that through the conversion of many of [our] 600 locations into PDP at about 25 wells a year,” Bates said.
PennEnergy estimates it holds around 25 years of drilling inventory across the Marcellus and Upper Devonian formations.
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Burket Shale
The Burket Shale is an organic-rich mudstone lying above the Tully Limestone and several meters above the Marcellus.
The Burket on PennEnergy’s acreage is largely a wet-gas play, enhancing well economics through added liquids production and higher Btu content.
“These wells are incredibly economic on their own,” Bates said. “But when co-developed with the Marcellus and shared infrastructure and pad space, these wells become an incredible opportunity to effectively double our wet gas inventory.”
Bates said PennEnergy has experimented with sequencing its fracs between different formations. PennEnergy has historically fracked its Marcellus wells before the Upper Devonian targets.
“What we found is that when you lead with the Upper Devonian frac, it creates this pressure barrier,” he said. “We didn’t have any breakthrough amongst the Tully that caused issues, but it was a pressure wave that contained that frac in the Marcellus.”
The change in frac sequencing has shown a 15% uplift in the company’s well results, Bates said.
“By containing that frac and really hyper-stimulating the Marcellus zone, we think we’ve really capitalized on that uplift,” he said.
PennEnergy turned in line (TIL) eight wet gas wells during the third quarter. Results are early but “early indications are really positive.”
The company is currently fracking its last pad of the year, and the 12 wet gas wells will turn to sales in the fourth quarter. The pad features some of the longest laterals PennEnergy has drilled in Appalachia.
PennEnergy is also seeing strong results from its dry gas wells, where type curves are above 2.7 Bcf/1,000 lateral ft.
The company TIL’d six dry gas wells in the second quarter that exceeded expectations by 115%.
Around 80% of PennEnergy’s inventory breaks even at NYMEX pricing of $2.50/MMBtu or lower.
“That gives us a lot of durability to go execute on this forecast even if prices do the thing we don’t like to talk about,” Bates said.
EQT Corp. has also tapped the Burket/Genesee over the years in Washington and Greene counties, Pennsylvania. State records indicate EQT spud three Genesee wells in Washington County in early July, its first in the formation since September 2018.
Other companies with wells landed in the Burket/Genesee in the past five years include Range Resources, STL Resources and Seneca Resources.
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