MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — In a classroom inside West Virginia University’s Brooks Hall, students, researchers and media have gathered for a tour of the Marcellus Shale Energy and Environment Laboratory — dubbed MSEEL for short.
A research project unlike anything before it, MSEEL sits at the meeting point between industry, government and academia. Over the next five years, researchers and professionals with WVU, Northeast Natural Energy, the U.S. Department of Energy and The Ohio State University will set out to learn everything they can about the natural gas extraction process by studying a working pad site.
The research side of the $12.8 million project is being funded by an $8.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, while private industry is financing the actual gas production processes that will be studied…