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Sep 20, 2024 By Rick Shrum 5 min read

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of stories reflecting on 20 years of gas drilling in Southwestern Pennsylvania.

Mount Pleasant Township is among the most appropriately named municipalities in Southwestern Pennsylvania.

It is pleasant, to be sure, a friendly, bucolic town of about 3,300 residents nestled in its gently rolling hills.

Shane Maga has lived there comfortably for a long while. Yet, when asked to reflect back nearly two decades, he recounted a time of discomfort and uncertainty over the anticipated arrival of a little-known entity.

“People were scared out of their wits about fracking,” said Maga, chairman of the township supervisors. “No one really knew how things would work out, but we tried to make the best of it.”

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, dates to the 1860s in the United States. But in the eastern part of the country, that process did not have a significant impact in the extraction of oil and natural gas from shale and other rock formations until near the turn of the 21st century.

In the early 2000s, it appeared the county, and the township, which were sitting atop the expansive Marcellus Shale formation, were destined to become familiar with fracking. “We started to see benefits and advantages,” Maga said.

Fame would be among Mount Pleasant’s benefits.

In early October 2004, high on a hill off Sabo Road, Range Resources Corp. successfully fracked a well on the Renz farm.

Workers at Range extracted an estimated 300,000 cubic feet of natural gas that day.

At the time, it was the largest fracking job executed east of the Mississippi River. The well site has been labeled, “The discovery well for the modern Marcellus Shale gas play.”

Marcellus is the second-largest natural gas field in the world, stretching 31,000 square miles from southern New York state to northern Kentucky, and west from the Catskills to Ohio. The formation is five times the size of the bountiful Barnett Shale in Texas.

The success at Renz Well No. 1, and subsequent industry successes, helped to spark the Shale Revolution in the United States. The oil and natural gas industry, according to the American Petroleum Institute’s website, supports more than 11 million jobs nationwide.

Pennsylvania, in particular, has benefited from this revolution, rising to No. 2 gas producer in the U.S., behind Texas.

For making an indelible mark, Renz Well and everyone involved with the project will be honored at a date to be determined in October. Range Resources, which declined to participate in this energy series, and the Washington County Chamber of Commerce are collaborating on the placement of a marker on the well site.

Renz No. 1 is an exemplary example of that bromide, “third time’s a charm.” It was a once-failed well when Range Resources decided to frack there in 2003.

The well, according to an article written by Seamus McGraw in Pittsburgh Quarterly magazine, produced a small amount of gas after a few days of drilling, and increasing amounts over several days before the flow abruptly stopped.

Bill Zagorski, a Range Resources geologist, wasn’t deterred. A voracious reader, he studied old records from this region and histories of shale and other formations that could provide clues to unlocking the Marcellus.

Among his findings: there was a fair amount of drilling in the Mount Pleasant area in the 1940s, where there were reports of brief but strong showings of gas, including several blowouts. That was promising, and buoyed his hopes for Renz. (One blowout reportedly sent several hundreds of pounds of rigging 30 feet up a well bore.)

Range Resources had spent a lot on the 2003 project, and was about to spend more. Zagorski, according to McGraw, was still optimistic that Renz would prove to be bountiful, but less upbeat when he pitched a return to Renz to Jeff Ventura, the company’s chief operating officer. The COO said yes.

“People knew it was there,” said Terry Engelder, professor emeritus at Pennsylvania State University and a consultant to oil and gas companies. “Zagorski talked to Range to not close the well, and because it was already drilled, not plugged, the company decided to try it.”

Try it and succeed beyond expectations. For his diligence and foresight, Zagorski, a Western Pennsylvania resident, was declared “Father of the Marcellus” by the Pittsburgh Association of Petroleum Geologists.

The Marcellus was unlocked and potentially prodigious. Engelder proposed that 50 trillion cubic feet of natural gas could be recovered from the formation, or the same amount the entire country uses in about 2 1/2 years. He later revised that estimate upward to 489 trillion cubic feet, or enough for 20 years in the U.S.

Natural gas is a fossil fuel that burns ethane, an issue the industry is striving to address. But what happened at the Renz Well 20 years ago has been huge – leading to a more plentiful energy source that would yield financial boons for landowners via royalties and municipalities from impact fees.

Jeff Kotula, president of the Washington County Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement: “Since Range Resources’ successful commercialization of the Renz No. 1 Well in 2004, natural gas has positioned itself as a transformative industry with wide-ranging positive impacts on our economy, community and country.

“The industry supports (many) jobs, creates significant local and state tax revenues, and generates billions in economic benefits. It also allows Washington County to be a leader in our nation’s energy independence – reducing our reliance on foreign energy sources.

“The (chamber) recognized the industry’s potential early on and concentrated our efforts on educating our business community on the opportunities available in the natural gas economy, and how our local businesses could work together with the energy industry in mutually beneficial ways.”

“We are proud that some of the leading companies in the energy industry – including producers, transportation, processing and secondary service providers – have selected Washington County as their home – where they are now our family, friends and neighbors.”

That includes Mount Pleasant.

“Overall,” Shane Maga said, “people are more relaxed now.”