snl.com  Thursday, August 20, 2015 11:02 AM ET  By Bill Holland

The CEO of Marcellus and Utica shale driller EQT Corp. says the lesson to be learned from the company's monster 72.9 MMcf/d Scotts Run well is that huge supplies and low natural gas prices could be here for a long time.

"We do believe that even though we are still getting our grips on our Utica well and that of our peers, there are now enough data points that we have to start pondering what the implications of the Utica are," EQT CEO David Porges told an audience at the Enercom Oil and Gas Conference 2015 in Denver on Aug. 18.

The Scotts Run dry gas well in Greene County, Pa., is the most productive shale gas well ever drilled based on its 24-hour production rate. In Washington County, Pa., Range Resources Corp. reported drilling the previous top shale gas well, the 59 MMcf/d Claysville Sportsman's Club, on April 28.

"I think it is quite possible that the implications of the Utica will include that the industry will have to get comfortable with a lower clearing price, as it were, for natural gas," Porges said. "I just think that is something we are going to have to learn to live with because the folks who have Utica, and core Utica, and core Marcellus, and of course that is not just us, that is a handful of our peers, may well find that this is a prolific enough play that we are able to affect the supply demand balance in the country and that creates opportunities and also challenges for a variety of folks."

Porges comments come a month after a multiyear study by West Virginia University's Appalachian Oil and Gas Research Consortium estimated that the Utica, roughly 4,000 feet below the Marcellus, contains 782 Tcf of gas and 1,960 MMbbl of liquids, making it larger than the overlying Marcellus Shale, which is now the largest gas field in the U.S.

The WVU report assumed that while 3% of Utica's oil can be recovered given current technology, the formation will yield 28% of its natural gas. Natural gas liquids amounts were not computed because Ohio, which contributed the bulk of the Utica well results, includes NGLs in the natural gas stream.

The study used well results from industry, academia and consultants to characterize the geology of the Utica and neighboring formations and the location of sweet spots and fairways, as well as to estimate the size of the oil and gas resource.