Columbia Basin Gas Play

Spokane Journal of Business

"The Columbia Basin long has been believed to hold large amounts of natural gas sealed beneath thick layers of basalt, and the news that completion work was being done at the Mattawa well was met with keen interest. Mattawa is northwest of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. On Oct. 26, the Washington state Department of Natural Resources logged “spectacular results” in an auction of drilling leases in Eastern Washington, says William S. Lingley Jr., the department’s chief geologist. He cautions that industry has to test an area extensively before it can determine whether it’s commercially viable to develop a gas field. While no one knows precisely how big the Columbia Basin geologic formation is, “most people think it extends … to somewhere west of Ritzville,” Lingley says. The Web site Financial Sense Forum says that in the Denver conference, Parker said, “The geologic theory that we’ve all kind of operated under here for the last couple of years, and really was identified by Shell 25 years ago, has been confirmed, if you will, with another well. We believe we have encountered what we hoped to encounter prior to drilling the well, and we will be very interested to see what actual completion results are as we go into the remaining part of this year.” Says Lingley, “What they said in effect was that they had achieved what they set out to do when they drilled this ‘wildcat.’”"