By Gregory Wrightstone

To frack or not to frack has been a hot topic in the United States for several years. That discussion has been most intense in the state of Pennsylvania.

That is because the Keystone State is home to the Marcellus Shale, the largest natural gas accumulation in the world. According to Bill Zagorski, who was given the honorary moniker of “Father of the Marcellus,” the Marcellus contains 3,698 trillion cubic feet of gas (TCF). That size qualifies it as a mega-giant field.

To put that in perspective, the bubble map included here shows the top fifteen conventional natural gas fields in the world. The combined Gas-in-Place for all 15 is only slightly more than that for the Marcellus by itself.

In addition to this incredibly huge reservoir, two more reservoirs are being exploited in Pennsylvania. The Burket Shale is above the Marcellus and is a super-giant field, while the deeper Utica Shale may have reserves approaching that of the Marcellus.

Only by using horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing are these reserves made viable.

Pennsylvania and America can fuel the world’s needs for clean-burning natural gas for many generations and have plenty left over for our own domestic requirements. That is, if politicians and government would just get out of the way.

This commentary was first published in the CO2 Coalition Newsletter (email subscription available on our homepage).

Gregory Wrightstone is a geologist; executive director of the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, VA; author of Inconvenient Facts: The Science That Al Gore Doesn’t Want You to Know and the soon-to-be-published book, A Very Convenient Warming – How Modest Warming and More CO2 are Benefiting Humanity.