The Utica Shale is a black, calcareous, organic-rich shale of Middle Ordovician age that underlies significant portions of Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New York and other parts of eastern North America.
The Utica Shale is currently receiving a lot of attention because it is yielding large amounts of natural gas, natural gas liquids and crude oil to wells drilled in eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania. The United States Geological Survey's mean estimates of undiscovered, technically recoverable unconventional resources indicate that the Utica Shale contains about 38 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, about 940 million barrels of oil, and 208 million barrels of natural gas liquids.