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EXPLORER
Explorer of the year
Zagorski Made His Mark With the Marcellus
By DAVID BROWN, EXPLORER Correspondent
AAPG
To understand why Bill Zagorski is
getting AAPG’s Outstanding Explorer
Award at the upcoming AAPG Annual
Convention and Exhibition in Pittsburgh, you
have to travel far, far back into the distant
reaches of Deep Time.
All the way back to 2004.
It’s hard to believe now, but back then
the industry was just awakening to how
the technology from the successful Barnett
Shale development in Texas could be
applied to unlock other North American
shale plays.
Zagorski was in Pennsylvania, working
a play for Range Resources Corp. and
evaluating a well that passed through the
Devonian Marcellus Shale. He had the idea
of using Barnett-style horizontal drilling and
high-volume hydraulic fracturing to develop
the Marcellus.
What happened next is exciting,
informative, dramatic, instructional and
perhaps even inspirational – a success story
that has become part of the industry’s lore.
Today, Zagorski serves as vice
president-geology for Range Resources-
Appalachia LLC in Southpointe, Pa.
A native of Pittsburgh with bachelor’s
and master’s degrees in geology from the
University of Pittsburgh, he was named
“Father of the Marcellus” by the Pittsburgh
Association of Petroleum Geologists in
2009.
And this year he receives AAPG’s
Norman H. Foster Outstanding Explorer
Award, to be presented at the AAPG
Bill Zagorski, this year’s winner of the AAPG Norman H. Foster Outstanding Explorer Award,
looking at (and explaining) data from the Marcellus Shale play.
Annual Convention and Exhibition in
Pittsburgh, and given “in recognition
of distinguished and outstanding
achievement in exploration for petroleum
or mineral resources, by members who
have shown a consistent pattern of
exploratory success.”
AAPG “explorer of the year” honoree
Bill Zagorski is going to have a high profile
at this year’s AAPG Annual Convention and
Exhibition in Pittsburgh.
First, Zagorski will receive his Norman
H. Foster Outstanding Explorer Award
at the ACE opening session and awards
ceremony, which begins at 4 p.m. Sunday,
May 19.
Photos courtesy of James Knox | Tribune-Review
Getting Started
“I had an interest in science and geology
from a very early age,” Zagorski recalled. “I
was drawing dinosaurs on a tablet when I
was four or five and collecting rocks with my
dad when I was seven.”
Second, he’ll also be part of this year’s
Discovery Thinking Forum, which will
be held from 1:15-5 p.m. Monday, May
20, where he will discuss the liquids rich
portion of the Marcellus Shale play.
This year’s forum will offer five talks from
seven explorers who will talk about their
exploration experiences and successes.
(See related story, page 20.)
Although he began his university studies
majoring in chemistry with a minor in
mineralogy, he soon switched to geology –
but not yet with a focus in oil and gas.
“I didn’t have the ‘Ah-ha!’ moment
in petroleum geology until I finished
undergraduate school,” he said.
Zagorski went to work for Atlas Energy
Group Inc. in Pittsburgh, then moved on to
new independent Mark Resources Corp.,
which he called “a great career opportunity.”
“I started getting familiar with the
Devonian Shale and the Marcellus when I
took that job in 1983,” he said. “Back in that
time there was quite a bit of research going
on in the Department of Energy, and you
had the Section 29 tight sands tax credit,
so you were looking at $8, $9 per mcf gas
prices.”
At Mark Resources he became
interested in Western Canada’s Elmsworth
Field – and legendary AAPG geologist John
Masters’ basin-centered gas concepts.
“It’s not uncommon now, but at the time it
was quite unconventional as it went against
the anticlinal theory,” he said.
Zagorski used these concepts to study
the huge Clinton Medina fields in Ohio
and Pennsylvania and came up with a
major success: generating the prospect
that became the Cooperstown Gas Field
in Pennsylvania and led to the drilling of
thousands of wells. These studies also
See Zagorski, page 34
32 MAY 2013 WWW.AAPG.ORG