Hard Rock Exploration has acquired a permit to drill a test well to the Rogersville Shale. It will be south of Winfield, WV. For some reason, this area is very interesting to oil and gas companies. Cabot has already drilled the Cabot 50 well to the Rogersville just to the north of Winfield.
The Charleston Gazette ran an article about possible development of the Rogersville shale in the western part of West Virginia. Cabot Oil and Gas has been drilling the Cabot 50 in Putnam County for some time, and speculation is that it’s a good well. Unfortunately, due to the downturn in the price of oil and gas, it’s unlikely that we’ll see any serious development of the Rogersville shale before the end of 2015. As prices start to rise, I expect interest in the Rogersville shale to also rise.
Interestingly, there are at least two other formations that could turn out to be producible in that part of West Virginia. They are the Trenton-Black River formation and the Loysburg formation. They’re located in the Rome Trough, which seems to run pretty much in the same area where the maps we’ve seen are showing the Rogersville shale. There’s a pretty good, if short, discussion from 2013 on the Go Marcellus Shale website about development of those formations over in New York.