 Behind me is a well pad that contains seven Marcellus wells, so you can see them out here in the middle of the well pad. The Marcellus is about 8,000 to 9,000 feet below the ground here, so what that means is they had to drill about 8,000 feet down vertically, they were then drilled out horizontally to increase the well's contact with the shale reservoir, which ultimately increases the productivity of each well. The orientation of the horizontal sections of the well will either be to the northwest or to the southeast because there are fractures that run northeast-southwest that the wells should intercept in order to most increase their efficiency. Once the wells are drilled into the shale, they must be hydraulically fractured. The shale itself has very low permeability, meaning that gas or other hydrocarbons cannot flow through it readily. The hydraulic fracturing process opens up fractures in the shale by injecting water at high pressure, and along with the water there are an addition of chemicals and propane, which is typically sand, which is used to keep the fractures open. So for every gallon of water that's sent down into a shale well, you have about a pound and maybe upwards of two pounds of sand that acts as a propane to keep those fractures open. A typical well will use about a million gallons of water for every 1,000 feet of shale being fractured. So for instance these wells may have laterals that are on the order of 5,000 feet long, meaning that on the order of 5 million gallons of water were used along with 5 million pounds of sand, along with the chemicals added to the fracturing solution to enhance the overall process. A typical initial production rate on a well like this may be in the neighborhood of 10 million cubic feet per day. So as you start off with your production, your first day will typically be your highest day of production, and as you depressurize the reservoir, your production drops off. So you have a relatively steep decline curve, meaning that your production after one year of operation may be about 50% of what it was on that first day. So if you start off at 10 million cubic feet per day on day one, by day 365 you may only be producing 5 million cubic feet per day. And so that trend typically lasts for the first several years of the well, and then as you decrease the pressure, the production curve kind of reaches an equilibrium, so then the production doesn't change much day after day for the next several decades. One of these shale wells can be productive for over 30 years, but about half of the gas comes out in the first five years of production. So an ultimate recovery on one of these wells may be on the order of 10 billion cubic feet, which you get about 5 billion cubic feet over the first five years, and then an additional 5 billion cubic feet over the next 20 to 25 years. Along with the gas that's produced out of these wells, you get brine. That is salt water. Keep in mind that the Marcellus was an ancient sea deposit, so there are salts trapped in the shale itself along with deeper fluids that were injected up into the shale from great depth, which also contained a lot of salt. So in essence, the shale is just about saturated with salt. So when you inject the fracturing fluids down into the shale, it mixes with the shale, flushes or dissolves the salt out of the shale, and as you produce gas, you're also producing brine. So for every million cubic feet of gas you produce, you produce about 9 to 10 barrels of brine. So in every barrel there's 42 gallons. So you're looking at producing about 400 gallons of brine along with every million cubic feet of gas that's produced from a well. That's an awful lot of brine. What's the industry doing with it? Keep in mind that this brine may be anywhere from 2 to 10 times saltier than the oceans. So it can't be just dumped on the ground. The regulations dictate that the industry must either find a treatment facility that can handle the brine, use disposal wells to re-inject the brine deep into the earth, or recycle the brine in hydraulic fracturing operations. Here in Pennsylvania the industry has adopted the practice of recycling the brine. So about 85 to 90 percent of the brine that returns out of these wells can be used on another well that will be hydraulically fractured in the future. The tanks in the background actually store the brine that's produced from the wells. The gas comes out of the wells, goes through a gas-water separator, and then the brine is introduced into these tanks, whereas the gas is then introduced into the pipes, which is ultimately taken to the marketplace. The moisture must be removed from the gas so it can be used within the marketplace. So there are actually on-site dehydrators, which remove as much of the moisture as possible. And then once the gas is taken to a compressor station, there's an additional layer of dehydration. So by the time the gas reaches the marketplace, the gas is ready for use. The size of the well pad behind me is typically about 4 to 5 acres. That's large enough to bring in the drilling rig and the associated equipment. And then once the wells are drilled, the drilling rig moves on to the next well pad and the hydraulic fracturing equipment is brought in. So you need about that much space to actually accommodate all of that equipment. Once the wells are fractured and brought online and are producing gas, then about half of the well pad can be reclaimed.