New York Herkimer sand gas play to expand

By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, Feb. 4 -- Norse Energy Corp. ASA, Oslo, has identified 300 locations on seismic that could be prospective for gas in fractured Silurian Herkimer sandstone in central New York state.

The total play could ultimately recover 500 bcf of gas, the company said.

Norse Energy expects to drill 30 horizontal Herkimer wells in 2010 to double its yearend 2009 production to 24 MMcfd by the end of the year. Several wells await connection in early 2010 to a gathering system in Chenango County near Norwich (OGJ Online, Oct. 13, 2008).

Norse Energy, which has been drilling in New York since 1996, holds 180,000 acres leases of which 130,000 it judges to have potential in Ordovician Utica shale and Devonian Marcellus shale. The leases are in Broome, Chenango, Madison, and Otsego counties.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation is formulating regulations that would govern horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing in shale formations (OGJ Online, Jan. 25, 2010). Horizontal shale drilling isn’t permitted, and frac jobs in vertical wells are limited to 80,000 gal.