18 Facts About Marcellus Shale

Marcellus Formation or the Marcellus Shale is a Middle Devonian age unit of sedimentary rock found in eastern North America.

The term "Marcellus Shale" is the preferred name throughout most of the Appalachian region, although the term "Marcellus Formation" is acceptable within the State of Pennsylvania.

Marcellus Shale is found throughout the Allegheny Plateau region of the northern Appalachian Basin of North America.

Marcellus Shale appears in outcrops along the northern margin of the formation in central New York.

Nearby, in the Lehigh Gap area of Pennsylvania, the Marcellus Shale is extensively faulted, and the beds are steeply overturned, with a reverse dip angle of up to 40° south.

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Marcellus Shale is easily eroded, and is found underlying low areas between some Appalachian ridges, forming linear valleys of moderate relief.

Sampling of soil formed on the Marcellus Shale bedrock showed the dominant mineralogy consisted of quartz, illite, montmorillonite, muscovite, and biotite, with phases of todorokite and trona appearing at depths closer to the bedrock.

Stratigraphically, the Marcellus Shale is the lowest unit of the Devonian age Hamilton Group, and is divided into several sub-units.

The Marcellus Shale contains the oldest known diverse collection of thin-shelled mollusks still having well preserved shell microstructure.

Marcellus Shale fossils include specimens of the large clam-like brachiopod Spinocyrtia.

The Marcellus Shale was formed from the very first deposits in a relatively deep, sediment- and oxygen-starved, trough that formed parallel to the mountain chain.

The Marcellus deposition produced a transgressive black shale, because it was deposited in deepening conditions when the basin floor dropped as the mountains rose up.

Dark shale facies of the Marcellus were formed from flysch, a fine mud deposited in deep water; the deepening sea that deposited the Marcellus cut off the supply of carbonates that form limestone and the fine-grained flysch sediments buried the Onondaga limestone beds.

Marcellus Shale was deposited during the development of land plants, when atmospheric oxygen was increasing, resulting in a reduction of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and the seawater where it was deposited.

Marcellus Shale contains largely untapped natural gas reserves, and its proximity to the high-demand markets along the East Coast of the United States makes it an attractive target for energy development and export.

The Marcellus is an example of shale gas, natural gas trapped in low-permeability shale, and requires the well completion method of hydraulic fracturing to allow the gas to flow to the well bore.

The quality of the ore varied, and it was not always profitable to smelt, as several furnaces built near iron ore mines in the Marcellus Shale were abandoned before the ore and timber resources used to fuel them became scarce.

The slates from the Marcellus Shale were inferior to the Martinsburg Formation slate quarried further south, and most quarries were abandoned, with the last significant operation in Lancaster County.