CHENANGO COUNTY – Move over Marcellus, Herkimer is here.
A natural gas company operating at two well sites in northern Chenango County said the subsurface rock formation has been yielding about one million cubic feet of natural gas per day.
Norse Energy Corporation of Norway, the parent company of Nornew, Inc., announced the significant discovery in a press release on Sept. 18, stating that the find was restrained by the capacity of the production equipment and represented only “the tip of the iceberg.”
“We now have on order larger capacity production equipment so that the encouraging geology of the area is allowed to demonstrate its full potential,” said Chief Executive Officer Øivind Risberg.
Norse conservatively estimates average reserves of 1.2 billion cubic feet (214,000 BOE) per well. With 250 identified well locations, the company’s projected reserve potential is in excess of three hundred billion cubic feet (53 MMBOE) in the Herkimer Formation alone.
“The potential of the Herkimer formation should also be coupled with the potential in the Marcellus and Utica shale formations underlying much of our land position of more than 130,000 acres in central New York,” Risberg said.
Nornew Inc. spokesman David Holbrook, who said he wrote the release for Norse Energy, would not disclose the exact location of the two wells. However, most of the company’s wells are located along county Rt. 16 in Smyrna and Plymouth. Those in production are connected and currently flowing through a New York State Gas & Electric or Dominion line.
Nornew has actively targeted natural gas in both Madison and Chenango counties for the past several years. Company forecasts are to drill 50 wells in the two counties this year and 150 in 2009 if market prices remain favorable and state regulations don’t force companies to scale back operations.
The Marcellus Shale formation within the Appalachian River Basin in New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio has held much of the world’s attention all year. If the experts are correct about its prospects, approximately 50 trillion cubic fee of natural gas is believed to be stored in the Marcellus, enough to handle the entire country’s energy needs for at least two years.
“I try to caution people on expectations,” Holbrook said yesterday, “because there is a lot of discovery to be done, but clearly we are really encouraged by what we’re seeing and it reinforces our faith in the area and why we are here.”
Chenango County Farm Bureau President Bradd Vickers said the find represents “major bucks.”
“This isn’t little chicken feed,” he said, adding that it costs natural gas companies about a million dollars to drill a well.
“The results are very profitable. They wouldn’t be here if they weren’t,” he said referring to Nornew.
The Norse Energy Corp. release noted the relatively shallow depth of the targeted formations, the high quality and essentially market ready gas, proximity of NYSEG and Dominion transmission pipelines, and the opportunity for premium pricing due to the relative close proximity to attractive markets in the northeastern United States.