Earl and Sedor photographer JB Earl had the privilege of being at a Marcellus Shale gas drilling rig in the Wilkes-Barre area recently. He was capturing images for both a multinational energy consortium and a US energy company.
An interesting fact about these wells is that the derek (the metal structure over the well) doesn’t actually push the drill thru the earth, but rather it it used for pulling the drill sections out of the ground.
The drill progresses downward simply under it’s own weight.