Gail Powers

Hi Gail, you had asked what a devonian well was. I will give you a brief explanation, The Devonian Shale was formed from the mud of shallow seas that existed about 350 million years ago, during the Devonian period of the Paleozoic era. This shale is a very fine grained sedimentary rock which is easily breakable into thin parellel layers. Its a very soft rock but does not disinegrate when it becomes wet. These shales can contain natural gas when two thick black shale deposits sandwich a thinner layer of shale, these wells are commonly 3,000 to 5,000 foot deep. To sum it up for you its a gas well that will probally produce some oil also.

the geologist in me has to respond and clarify this a bit, haha. the marcellus shale isnt sandwiched between black shales. It IS the black shale. All hydrocarbon-bearing rocks have either oil or gas in them, usually a mix of both. For you, you dont have to worry about getting oil or gas, you can consider them equal - as far as how much money theyll make... not exactly true - but close enough. The marcellus shale is mostly filled with gas, because it was once buried very deeply. In WV, it wasnt buried that deep - so it's more likely to have some oil in it. you dont have to worry about this though. just collect the check and cash it.