Microbiology of the Utica Shale

In order to determine the innate microbial community of shale gas reservoirs and how they are impacted by hydraulic fracturing, this study analyzed biomass collected from produced water and rock from hydraulically fractured wells in the Utica Shale. The samples include rock chips from a drill core from one Utica well, produced water from that same Utica well, and produced water from 12 different Utica wells that had been in production between 1-5 years, spanning the oil and gas windows of SE Ohio. The samples were filtered for biomass, extracted, amplified, and 16S rRNA gene sequencing was performed on the Illumina MiSeq platform.