Ohio's shale gas potential is still years from full development, but the buzz about the business opportunities is already presents is drawing 3,000 to Cleveland this week.
Chesapeake Energy workers on a drilling rig connect pipe as they bore a gas well into the Utica shale, a rock formation 6,000 feet deep.
The expected boom in Ohio shale gas production is still just that -- an anticipated boom.
Since January 2011, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources has issued about 457 drilling permits for Utica Shale wells. Some of those permits expired without any activity.
As of Monday, 187 wells had been drilled, and of that number only 45 were listed as producing on the department's public website. There were 22 rigs drilling new wells.
If those statistics don't sound much like a boom, try explaining why 3,000 are planning to show up at the International Exposition Center Wednesday and Thursday for the Ohio Oil & Gas Association's Oilfield Expo 2012.
The two-day event is only the second full-blown trade affair in the association's nearly 50-year-old history, and already it's expected attendance is twice that of the first show, held last year in Canton.
There will be a lot more to see.
Oilfield Expo 2012 drawing from across the nation
At last count, 250 exhibitors from more than a dozen states had gobbled up the 75,000 square feet of space at the I-X Center. Exhibits include an actual drilling rig and a lot of heavy equipment.
Environmental service companies will rub shoulders, or at least booths, with engineering companies, oil geology firms, sand and gravel suppliers, tubing suppliers, surveyors, Wall Street analysts and lawyers.
This year it's about more than exhibits. Speakers include representatives from some of the biggest gas and oilfield companies in the nation.
A representative from oilfield services company Halliburton will give an overview of the Utica Shale potential. And a panel of executives from the companies building gas and oil processing plants in Ohio will talk about their progress.
The Oil and Gas division of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources will give an update on state drilling regulations, and a representative from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will give an overview on interstate pipeline development.
The association's annual fall technical conference with the Society of Petroleum Engineers this year is wrapped into the expo event and will feature experts offering 10 training sessions. The 45-minute classes will include the latest explorations and production technologies, from advances in water recycling to new developments in hydraulic fracturing, the technique used to shatter or fracture shale rock to free gas and oil.
Admission to the 10 sessions is included in the $20 Expo admission fee. The fee is $10 for students.
Utical Shale potential not yet proven
In the spring of 2011, Lawrence Wickstrom, former chief of the Ohio Geological Survey, talked about the potential amount of gas and oil under the state.
Assuming only 1.2 percent of the estimated oil and gas locked in shale under the state could be successfully produced, Wickstrom said gas production could total 3.75 trillion cubic feet and oil about 1.31 billion barrels.
Assuming 5 percent could be produced as the industry predicted, producers could be looking at 15 trillion cubic feet of gas and 5.5 billion barrels of oil, he said.
Since then, things have not progressed as quickly as many thought, say analysts, partly because new pipeline networks are being built to move the gas from remote wells to the existing network of lines.
Also, producers are waiting for the construction of expensive processing plants to clean and separate oil from the gas and the different kinds of gases that typically come from wells.
And it hasn't helped that natural gas prices have been stuck below $4 per 1,000 cubic feet as supplies are still greater than demand.
Another reason that has probably dampened initial enthusiasm is that, so far at least, oil production has not been as high as geologists thought it would be.
Producers such as Chesapeake Energy were eager to drill the Utica formations because some early test wells showed a high volume of oil, which can be sold for more than the equivalent amount of natural gas.
"The reported volumes of oil are lower than estimated, but higher than conventional wells," the state notes on the same web page providing the weekly statistical update.
But "wet gas" is still somewhat of an incentive to drill in Ohio.
Wet gas is raw gas from a well that also includes much more valuable ethane in addition to the methane that makes up most natural gas. Ethane is the gas used to make plastics.
The state notes that wet gas production will probably surge as pipelines and processing plants are built.