The Utica Shale and Marcellus Shale are larges source of natural gas found in rock formations buried thousands of feet below the surface. This region stretches throughout “portions of Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New York, Quebec, and other parts of eastern North America” [2]. Over the past few decades this source of abundant natural gas has been a target of incredible profits for energy companies in setting up fracking wells. The Utica Shale is estimated to contain “about 38 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, about 940 million barrels of oil, and 208 million barrels of natural gas liquids” [2]. This is an incredible amount of energy to be harvested, but the side-effects of fracking and the use of fossil fuels sometimes outweighs the energy gain as fracking can be extremely harmful to the environment and the people living around fracking sites.
Figure 2: Map of Marcellus Shale and Utica Shale [2]
Monroe County, Ohio is located in the middle of the Utica Shale at the border of Ohio and West Virginia making it a ‘hot’ area for fracking companies to establish wells. There are currently 84 producers from 1,814 active wells throughout the county [3].
Figure 3: Location of Monroe County, OH