RINO Alert: Marietta Council Prez Endorses Democrat Amy Acton
Susan Vessels, the Republican (we use that term loosely) president of Marietta, OH City Council, has endorsed Democrat Amy Acton for governor of Ohio. Why? Because Acton promised to honor Marietta’s call for a three-year moratorium on new wastewater injection wells. Vessels is so fixated on blocking injection wells that she’s willing to hand the governor’s office — and control of the agency that regulates Ohio’s oil and gas industry — to the woman who, as Ohio’s health director in 2020, signed the order that shut down the state. That’s not a Republican. That’s a RINO (Republican In Name Only). Read More “RINO Alert: Marietta Council Prez Endorses Democrat Amy Acton”
A year and a day after the Farnsworth #4 orphan well blew out and burned six people inside Ohio’s Wayne National Forest, one of the survivors went to court. Chazz Bates — a 20-year-old rig hand at the time — filed suit Aug. 21 in Washington County Common Pleas Court against his own employer, Monroe Drilling Operations LLC, and the cementing subcontractor on the job, Zanesville-based Formation Cementing Inc. The complaint, which also names 10 unidentified “John Doe” defendants, alleges the two companies skipped basic well control before pumping cement into a well nobody had pressure-tested — and that an ODNR inspector had flagged Monroe Drilling’s homemade wellhead as leaking and inadequate two months before the explosion. 
It’s a sellout, and we now have the full scorecard. On Tuesday, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) auctioned drilling rights to 40 parcels of federal minerals under Ohio’s Wayne National Forest (WNF), and every parcel found a buyer. The 2,776.84 acres in Monroe and Washington counties brought $11,097,693 in total receipts. Five companies won leases, and one of them, Apex Energy Operating III LLC, walked off with nearly two-thirds of the acreage. We have BLM’s full parcel-by-parcel results, embedded below. It’s the first federal lease sale in the WNF since March 2017. 
Ohio pumped roughly 2 trillion cubic feet of natural gas out of the ground last year, most of it from the Utica Shale. And yet 43 families in Washington County are being told to find another way to heat their homes by October 29 — because the wells that feed their gas line are running out of gas. The Marietta Times and the Parkersburg News & Sentinel both reported last week that Knox Energy has notified 43 customers in the Belpre area that their natural gas service ends October 29. The reason isn’t a billing dispute or a rate case. It’s geology. 
The Columbus Dispatch — a paper based 120 miles northwest of the action — parachuted into Marietta, Ohio, yesterday with a long story about shale wastewater injection wells that leads with the words “radioactive,” “toxic,” and “Russian roulette,” and waits ten paragraphs to tell readers the one fact that matters most: no evidence of drinking water contamination has turned up. Not now. Not in 15 years. We’ve covered this fight since 2025, and we’ll say again what we said in July — there IS a real problem here, but it isn’t the one the Dispatch is selling. 
Four Washington County, Ohio, Class II injection wells voluntarily stopped operating July 1-2 after state regulators from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) said they may be affecting nearby oil and gas production wells. The wells are Redbird Nos. 4 and 5, American Growers No. 1, and Nichols No. 1-A, although the Nichols owner disputed that operations had ceased at that well. ODNR and operators will develop corrective plans, while a third-party consultant examines nearby private water wells. Activists want broader, long-term groundwater testing, noting that Redbird No. 4 waste has previously migrated more than 5 miles underground. It’s important to note that the alleged migration of fluids affected other (conventional) oil and gas wells, NOT water wells. 
Last November, the Buckeye Environmental Network, backed by lawyers from the controversial Earthjustice, sued the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) over permitting two new shale wastewater injection wells in the Marietta area, claiming the standard used to evaluate the wells was old and out-of-date (see 
Wastewater injection wells are an essential, safe, and highly regulated component of Southeast Ohio’s fracking industry. Banning these wells would trigger an economic catastrophe, leading to job losses and reduced public funding, without providing any actual environmental benefits. Yet that’s exactly what the political leaders of Marietta, OH, in collusion with virulent anti-fossil fuel groups, are attempting to do. Opposing injection wells while supporting fracking (as Marietta’s “leaders” are doing) is contradictory, as the two are inseparable for regional energy production and the area’s continued economic stability. 
In January, a coalition of so-called environmental groups lodged an ethics complaint against Ohio Senator Brian Chavez, alleging that he failed to disclose ownership in five natural gas LLCs while leading the Senate Energy Committee (see 
Since August, we’ve reported about an ongoing war of words between the City of Marietta officials (mostly Republicans) and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) over a permit for a fifth wastewater injection well located close to the city (see 
In August, Marietta, OH, officials, including the city’s Republican mayor, law director, water superintendent, and a majority of city council members, asked the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) Oil and Gas to deny a permit application from DeepRock Disposal Solutions for the Stephan #1 injection well, which would be the company’s fifth injection well in the area (see