From a standing start in 2009, natural gas production from the Marcellus Shale in Bradford County Pennsylvania (PA) now exceeds 2.2 billion cubic feet (bcf) per day from 728 wells (to end June 2013). To put this in perspective, the UK consumes about 8 bcf per day and so 4 Bradford counties (about 3000 wells) could make the UK self- sufficient. The catches are that Bradford County is a production sweet spot – you have to find the sweet spots before you can produce them. And to keep production going, over a hundred new wells need to be drilled every year. 6 charts below the fold show the production history, average well productivity and decline rates from Bradford County. Figure 1   This chart shows the production stack for 728 Marcellus shale gas wells, Bradford Co. PA. XL would only let me plot about 150 data series and so […]