1) Chemist Paul Schettler of Juniata College conducted research in the 1970s-1990s on natural gas deposits in the Marcellus Shale, which underlies Pennsylvania. His work helped determine how gas flows through shale rock. 2) Schettler developed experiments to test shale rock permeability and designed instruments to measure gas flow in wells. This helped energy companies understand natural gas production from shale. 3) While the research provided hands-on learning for students, the demands of working with energy companies led Schettler to focus on teaching. Interest and funding for his work declined in the 1990s but has renewed as energy prices have risen.

1. 27
2010Fall-Winter
26
Juniata
By John Wall
Photography: J.D. Cavrich
Juniata Chemist Finds
Renewed Interest
in Shale Research
from ’70s to ’90s
I
n the beginning there was the rock.
Encased inside the rock was an interesting substance
that could provide heat and light. Later identified
as natural gas, this substance was initially thought
worthless. For decades oil drillers burned off excess gas, a
byproduct of oil production, until someone figured out that
natural gas could be a source of energy too. As gas became
more valued as a product, energy companies in the 1950s
and ’60s started to drill for gas deposits in black shale and
in some cases they would hit gas, but almost always nothing
would happen.
Actually, something was happening. There was gas escaping
from fractures in the shale, but at levels that were undetectable to
drillers. As it turned out, the Marcellus Shale, which potentially holds
one of the largest natural gas deposits on earth, runs right through
Pennsylvania (including Huntingdon). Back then, around 1960, though,
the gas companies knew the shale held gas, they just didn’t know how
to get the gas out of the shale effectively.
But we are getting ahead of our story.
Juniata’s role in researching what could be one of the largest
energy deposits in North America starts in 1970 in the Columbus,
Ohio boardroom of the Columbia Gas Corp. Sitting at the table is
John Stauffer, president of Juniata College (1968-1975) and a Columbia
board member, and he’s listening to a presentation on how company
engineers can’t understand why some shale wells produce gas, but
most don’t. Stauffer decides to bring the problem back to campus.
Enter Paul Schettler. At first, he didn’t know what was going on
with the shale wells, either. Although his graduate research involved
Chemist Paul Schettler’s research on how natural gas flows
through shale, a project that dates back to the 1970s, now has
received new interest as energy prices rise and gas companies
look to the gas-rich Marcellus Shale (which runs through
Pennsylvania, including Huntingdon).

2. 2928
Juniata
2010Fall-Winter
adsorption of gases into clay-like
materials and he was a physical
chemist, Schettler had spent most
of his time in a college classroom,
not running around on wildcat
rigs wearing a hard hat. The closest
he’d ever been to a big drill was the
dentist’s office. But he had an idea
of where to start to solve the gas
company’s problem.
“The gas company’s petroleum
engineers didn’t understand it
at all,” says Schettler, who would
spend more than 20 years working
on various gas-related projects
and receive more than $1.3 million
in research grants from the U.S.
Department of Energy, the Gas
Research Institute, Terra Tek
Corp. and
Columbia Gas. “In a gas well, their
instruments would measure that
the permeability of the rock was
zero (meaning no gas was flowing)
but occasionally they would get
(gas) flow.”
“I was much younger then than
I am now, but I said right away that
I could measure the permeability,”
Schettler recalls, laughing. “So I set
up some experiments and Columbia
Gas started sending me samples.”
The central experiment
Schettler devised involved putting
shale samples under pressure
using methane gas. He would
pressurize the sample, then release
the pressure while sealing the
apparatus. If pressure rose in the
sealed area, that meant the shale
was permeable and natural gas
could flow through it.
Like almost all scientists,
Schettler took his results, published
them, and subsequently was
invited to present his research at
a Department of Energy meeting
in Washington, D.C. Since almost
all scientists love listening to
presentations, Schettler arrived
early and settled in to listen to some
DOE scientists. “I heard a group
present research on the decline
curve of shale natural gas wells the
night before my talk and I realized
what I was getting was a small
permeability on the rock and what
they were getting from their work
was that these wells (if there was
detectable gas flow) produced over
20 to 30 years,” he says. “I stayed up
and rewrote my talk to relate my
lab results to the flow of gas in
these wells.”
While not quite the “Eureka
moment” that Edwin Drake felt
when his Titusville, Pa. oil well
came in, everybody at the meeting
knew the physical chemist from
Juniata was onto something.
Back on Campus
Schettler created a grant
proposal in 1976 to follow up on his
presentation and submitted it to
the National Science Foundation.
“I got a call from the NSF telling
me, ‘We cannot fund your proposal,
DOE won’t let us. DOE will contact
you.’” Schettler recalls. “The energy
department funded our proposal
and pretty soon we had core
samples of shale coming to the lab
from all over—New York, Ohio,
West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky
and Pennsylvania.”
By the late 1970s, Schettler was
deeply immersed in gas research.
He was taking teams of students on
drill sites and Rick Parmely, then
a Juniata lab manager and now a
scientist with Restek, a State College
firm specializing in chromatography,
was overseeing the rock sample tests
arriving weekly.
For fans of “ancient history,”
Schettler used a computer to
calculate and analyze his tests.
With the aid of Dale Wampler,
then a professor of computer
science, Schettler wrote software
(Wampler did the hardware) for
his instrument analysis. Since
this was about 30 years ago,
they didn’t use a laptop or even
a desktop. They used a Data
General “minicomputer,” which
was small for its time, but still
was about the size of a window
air conditioner.
In addition to Juniata’s
permeability studies, Columbia
Gas sought ways to make
drilling more predictable.
According to Schettler, teams
of 10 to 20 people would staff
a drill site at a cost of about
$100,000 a day. “They didn’t
have any way of measuring
how much gas flowed through
the rock,” Schettler explains.
“The method they had been using
was lowering a microphone into
the drill hole to see if they could
hear hissing.”
Once more the decidedly
younger Schettler said he could
do something about that and set
out to design flow meters for use
in detecting natural gas flow. In
fall 1981 he went on sabbatical and
In 1977, hence the black-and-white photography, Schettler
demonstrates how Juniata’s labs test core samples from
gas wells. He would receive these samples from wells across
the northeastern United States. Looking on is Marjorie
Berrier, left, and the late Jane Crosby, both representing
the League of Women Voters. Schettler gave a lecture on
his gas research to the group in May 1977.
“They didn’t have any way of measuring how much gas flowed
through the rock,” Schettler explains. “The method they had been
using was lowering a microphone into the drill hole
to see if they could hear hissing.”
Instrumental Collaboration
C
ollaboration is the essence of science, and Juniata is
known for “strange bedfellow” partnerships that result
in superb teaching teams, innovative programs or
groundbreaking research. Witness Paul Schettler and Todd
Gustafson. A chemist and a biologist/ecologist. They hardly could
have been expected to cross paths at a larger place.
But there were interlaced interests. Schettler is a private pilot.
Gustafson was a U.S. Navy aviator in Vietnam. They both like to
solve scientific puzzles. They both like to tinker with things.
“I have two engineering degrees and I’ve always liked to play
with gadgets. In the ’50s, when I was about in sixth grade I built a
Geiger counter,” Gustafson says.
When Columbia Gas Corp. and other agencies funded Juniata’s
research on gas flow in shale, Gustafson used part of that funding
to develop, with Schettler, two instruments critical to the success of
the project.
The first instrument, a thermistor, was housed in a metal tube
and hooked up to an HP-41 calculator. The second, more elaborate,
instrument used a sensor developed by the mining industry that
could detect hydrogen sulfide gas. Gustafson’s adaptation of the
sensor measured the dilution of the hydrogen sulfide gas as it
flowed up to the sensor. “It could measure flow and intensity of flow
throughout the well bore,” he says.
Gustafson and Schettler spent time testing their prototypes
at mining sites throughout the East. “I had weeks where I would
load up the car and drive to West Virginia or Kentucky and work
the whole weekend there,” he says. Eventually the glamour (or
exhaustion) of gas research waned and Gustafson returned to
biology labs.
“It was great learning about another slice of the world and it
was a release for my engineering ideas—and it helped pay for my
kids’ education!”
video➤ www.juniata.edu/magazine
Photo:(right)JuniataPhotoFile

3. 3130
Juniata
2010Fall-Winter
tried to figure out instruments
that could measure gas flow “down
hole” or deep in the depths of a test
well. Collaborating with Juniata
biologist Todd Gustafson (“he can
build anything,” Schettler says), the
two tinkerers came up with two
prototypes.
The first flow meter was
“basically a hot wire” called a
thermistor, according to Gustafson.
When gas flows around a wire
that is electrified, it cools the wire
and changes its resistance. “This
instrument, as it was lowered, could
tell us where the gas was entering
the well bore within about a foot,”
Schettler says.
The second prototype was a
tubular instrument with a fan at
the bottom. Injected with hydrogen
sulfide, the instrument would release
a continuous stream of hydrogen
sulfide and as the fan pushed the
gas upward, the instrument could
measure the dilution levels of other
gases present in the drill hole.
“We could calibrate that and get a
pretty accurate reading on what the
concentration of gas was.”
Columbia Gas received two
patents on the instruments. The
two gauges solved a major problem
for Columbia Gas—determining if
a well would be a major producer.
Unfortunately these scientific
breakthroughs caused a major
problem for Schettler and Juniata.
The Power of Gas
Although Schettler and many
students had been able to use the gas
research as an amazing experiential
resource, once the flow meters came
into use, they changed the game from
research to business. “I’d get a call
and they would want me and my flow
meters to be down in West Virginia
by 4 p.m. and I’d tell them ‘I’m giving
a final!’” Schettler recalls with a
laugh. “They’d say ‘So what.’ I had to
decide at that point whether I was
going to go into the gas business or if
I was going to teach.”
Which explains why Juniata’s
would-be gas magnate is driving
a decades-old Volvo instead of
a gleaming Mercedes, BMW or
whatever gas millionaires drive. “I
was tired,” he says emphatically. “It
was laborious and once we had
all the techniques in place all the
students were doing was analysis.”
Schettler explains that the students
who worked on the project received
lots of analytical experience,
but it did not translate well for
graduate school or for the energy
industry. “It was a lot of work, but
it was better done by petroleum
engineers, and energy companies
are not going to hire chemists to
do what geologists and petroleum
engineers are suited for. Still, at the
time we were the only academic
institution in the country that was
doing this kind of work.”
Todd Gustafson, professor of biology
and an inveterate tinkerer, helped
design two instruments that would
more accurately measure gas flow
and flow location in gas wells. Both
Gustafson and Schettler traveled
throughout the East Coast to test
their instruments on drill sites.
Beyond the Shale: New Life
The funding for Schettler’s
literally ground-breaking research
ran out in 1994. In addition to the
fact the project was not a perfect
fit for undergraduate researchers,
the gas industry lost interest in
recovering natural gas from shale.
Energy prices were down and the
costs of getting the gas outweighed
the 1990s gas prices.
That was before the summer of
2006, when gasoline prices spiked
over $4 a gallon. Shortly thereafter,
natural gas costs began to shoot
upward as well, in some part
because domestic gas supply was
dropping. All of a sudden, getting
natural gas out of solid rock was
looking pretty good.
Natural gas in shale exists in
fractures within the rock. In the
Marcellus Shale, the rock fractures
run vertically and are poorly
connected. When Schettler spent
his free time on drill sites, the wells
were drilled vertically. Nowadays,
drillers can turn the wellbore to
horizontal, making it much easier
to penetrate rock fractures. On top
of that, water can be introduced
into sealed sections of the well,
producing a pressure high enough
to fracture surrounding rock. Add
higher natural gas prices into the
equation and Juniata’s original
research is looking pretty important.
Schlumberger-Doll Corp., a
major services provider in the oil
industry, agreed, asking Schettler
to travel to its Boston headquarters
early in 2009 to give a seminar on
his work.
So, is “Schetts” ready to don
the hard hat and revisit gas wells
in the wilds of Pennsylvania? Well,
no. “I’m a person who goes to bed at
night with a problem on my mind
and then I wake up with a solution.
Sometimes I wake up awfully tired,”
he says. “Am I ready to do this again
at age 72? I don’t think so.”
But he wouldn’t mind if
someone else picked up the drill, so
to speak.
“I’d get a call and they would want me and my flow meters
to be down in West Virginia by 4 p.m. and I’d tell them ‘I’m giving a final!’”
Schettler recalls with a laugh. “They’d say ‘So what.’”
These days, at age 72, Schettler no
longer drives all over Pennsylvania
and West Virginia looking for well
sites. Instead, he spends most of
his time in his lab concentrating
on teaching and his gas
chromatography research.
>j<