October 20, 2009

Major companies drilling for natural gas in Western Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale rock formation are or soon will be recycling all the waste water recovered from their operations, executives said Monday.

Jeff Ventura, president of Range Resources Corp., emphasized the importance of recycling and reusing water recovered from its natural gas drilling operations in Washington County.

"We are recycling 100 percent of the flowback water, which is between 15 percent and 30 percent of the water used during Marcellus Shale well drilling," said Ventura. A typical well drilled in the Marcellus Shale formation uses new horizontal drilling technology that uses millions of gallons of water to fracture gas-containing shale thousands of feet underground and may return 600,000 gallons of water to be recycled.

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