Ohio’s Attorney General, Mike DeWine, offers the following tips for landowners when they are presented with an offer to lease their land for oil and gas drilling. Although Mr. DeWine is addressing Ohioans, these common sense tips apply to anyone in any geography.
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Ohio’s state parks and other government-owned land will soon be opened up for Marcellus and Utica Shale oil and gas drilling.
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Millions of barrels of fracking fluid—wastewater often referred to as “brine” because of the heavy salts in it—are being imported from Pennsylvania Marcellus Shale drilling operations into Ohio, and it has some Ohioans concerned. Fracking fluid/wastewater/brine is what comes back out of the bore hole after sending water, sand and some chemicals down the hole during drilling.
Many larger drillers now recycle 100 percent of the wastewater for reuse in other drilling. For those who do not recycle it, it must be disposed—either by treating it at special facilities where it is then safe for release back into streams and rivers, or by storing it in underground wells, known as injection wells.
Rhonda Reda, executive director of the non-profit group Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Program, recently spoke to a small audience at Columbiana High School (Columbiana, Ohio). Reda had some interesting facts and figures to share with the audience. She said that hydraulic fracturing was first used in Ohio to frack a well in 1951. Some of her other comments:
One of the issues facing energy companies who want to drill in the Marcellus Shale is how to get gas from the well to a processing facility, and from there to an interstate gas pipeline so it can make its way to market. Getting the gas from here to there requires pipelines. Without pipeline infrastructure, nothing happens.
One of the companies manufacturing pipelines for the Marcellus is V&M Star, based in Youngstown, Ohio. V&M Star, a subsidiary of France-based Vallourec & Mannesmann Tubes, is in the midst of a major expansion, building a new plant which will allow it to manufacture more pipelines for the Marcellus Shale.
Drillers who have been active in both Pennsylvania and West Virginia are now turning their sites on Eastern Ohio where a slice of the Marcellus Shale formation sits.
"The economies around us are benefiting from drilling. You see it in Pennsylvania, it’s real; you see it in West Virginia, it’s real. Now it’s here, and we have to grasp the opportunity," said state Sen. Wilson, D-Columbiana. "I think this is the biggest opportunity for job growth for eastern Ohio we have seen in a generation."
"This is really an enormous opportunity for us," said Wilson, who represents Belmont, Jefferson, Harrison and Columbiana counties. "I know we could be looking at a few thousand wells being drilled over the next several years – that creates a lot of work and economic activity.*
Anti-drilling forces are becoming vocal in Ohio, but the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, which oversees drilling in the state, says they’re prepared to ensure Marcellus drilling is done safely.
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Last night a crowd of more than 500 turned out in Ravenna (Portage County), Ohio to hear details about the oil and gas industry in OH, specifically about hydraulic fracturing (for “fracking”) and its current use in both oil and natural gas drilling.