Free Webinar Wednesday On Gas Migration Issues

A free webinar will be held from noon to 1 pm Wednesday, Feb. 29, on the topic, “A Geochemical Context for Stray Gas Investigations in the Northern Appalachian Basin.” Speaker is Fred Baldassare (left), a geoscientist with nearly 20 years of experience in investigating gas migration. The webinar is the sponsored by Penn State Extension as part of a series of educational programs on water-related issues connected to shale gas drilling. Registration (sign in as a “guest”) can take several minutes and is available at: https://breeze.psu.edu/water1

As the pace of drilling has increased, so have reports of stray natural gas migration to shallow aquifer systems. More than 1,900 gas and water samples in a five-county study area were analyzed for molecular and isotope geochemistry from 181 shale gas wells and 67 private water supply wells. Results provide geochemical evidence of pre-existing microbial and different thermogenic gas types in the strata above the Marcellus Shale formation. Baldassare previously served as consultant for a DEP initiative to investigate and characterize sources of stray carbon dioxide and methane. He has helped to pioneer the application and advancement of isotope geochemistry to identify the origin of microbial and thermogenic gases in the Appalachian Basin.