It’s a maturation process that took place in the more developed shale plays, Rodney Waller of Range Resources explained recently to The State Journal: first in the Barnett Shale in Texas and over time the Haynesville in Louisiana and Texas and the Fayetteville in Arkansas and Oklahoma. Range Resources operates in the Barnett and Marcellus shales.

Some of that process in the Marcellus was detailed Jan. 28 during EQT Corp.’s 2009 earnings conference call.

EQT is increasingly bullish on the Marcellus in general, according to company Chairman and CEO Murry Gerber, for several reasons.

Well costs have dropped in the past year, Gerber said, to about $3 million per well, a number he said the company is happy with.

At the same time, estimated ultimate recovery, or EUR, levels are moving up, resting now between 3.5 billion and 4 billion cubic feet on average per well in EQT’s West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania footprint, with good expectation of edging toward the top of the range.

Gerber’s enthusiastic comments about reasons for that increase in Marcellus EURs reveal some of the “wild west” nature of a new gas play.

With experience, the company improved its well completion techniques for the Marcellus in 2009, he said. It has learned to target the most brittle section of the formation, which is both the richest part and most susceptible to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

The company also has encountered some prime geologic conditions for the Marcellus in Pennsylvania’s southwestern-most Greene County, he said. One very new well there in particular had a 30-day average initial production of 14 million cubic feet per day.

“This well to our knowledge is the most prolific well drilled by the industry in the Marcellus play so far,” he said.

EQT also is pleased with its results in West Virginia, where the company has begun producing from 10 wells so far, Gerber said.

“The 30-day (initial production rates) from these wells are not very flashy, averaging about 2.1 mcf,” he said. But production at the West Virginia is declining more slowly than at the Pennsylvania wells.

“I can’t exactly give you the geological explanation for that just now, but that decreased fall-off in the production is something that’s caught our attention,” Gerber said.

EURs for the West Virginia wells are projected in the range of 3.5 bcfe, he said.

“So that West Virginia program is looking really, really good to us at this point in time.”

EQT’s reserves grew 31 percent in 2009 to 4.1 trillion cubic feet equivalent, up from 3.1 tcfe at the end of 2008.

Gerber attributed that to two factors, one regulatory and one operational.

New Securities and Exchange Commission rules on the reporting of reserves allow the inclusion of proved undeveloped reserves that previously had been excluded, he explained.

More important, though, is the company’s progression through its strategy for finding gas and getting it to market.

“We were drilling along pipelines — we wanted to assure that the wells we were drilling were going to get to market,” Gerber said.

“By definition, we were drilling a lot of unproved locations because the pipeline didn’t necessarily fit right on a location that was previously classified as proved,” he said. “We’ve been doing that” — and thereby methodically converting unproved reserves to proved — “for a couple years now.”

EQT drilled 46 horizontal Marcellus wells in 2009 and plans to drill 40 to 50 in 2010, with locations depending on where pipeline capacity is available.

The company’s Marcellus sales were 37 million cubic feet equivalent per day at the end of 2009, and it expects to double that by the end of 2010.