COLUMBUS, Ohio — A newly created branch of state government could decide Monday whether to open two of Ohio’s state parks and two wildlife protected areas to oil and gas development.
The Oil and Gas Land Management Commission’s agenda for its Monday meeting includes discussions and “possible actions” on 10 requests to open Salt Fork State Park, Salt Fork State Park Wolf Run, Valley Run Wildlife Area and Zepernick Wildlife Area at the borehole.
OGLMC’s action on the nominations would only establish that mineral rights to a portion of state lands are up for grabs. From there, the rights go through a public bidding process. Only once a bid is selected does state law require the commission to disclose the identity of the successful bidder.
Commissioners could act even though their own public comment process has been overrun by dozens of pro-fracking letters that people say they did not write or knowingly authorize. Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer have identified approximately 65 of these letters. Save Our Parks, a grassroots group formed to oppose fracking, said it found more than 80 others.
Learn more: Their names appeared on letters calling for fracking of Ohio state parks. They don’t know how.
Monday’s potential vote dates back to 2011, when Republican lawmakers first established the state’s land leasing program. However, under Govs. John Kasich and Mike DeWine, both Republicans, the commission never put in place administrative rules to implement the program. Late last year, Republican lawmakers passed new legislation that simultaneously began the land leasing process and legally redefined natural gas as “green energy.” DeWine signed it.
The gas industry has a keen interest in the outcome and the stakes are high. Houston-based Encino Energy previously offered Ohio a $115 million signing bonus and 20% royalties worth an estimated additional $1.8 billion by 2041 for access to gas below Salt Fork. State records show as many as 95 lobbyists are registered to lobby OGLMC on behalf of companies including Encino, EQT Corp., Ascent Resources, Calpine Energy Solutions, Marathon Petroleum, TC Energy, Shell, BP, Gulfport Energy Corp, Ohio Association of Realtors. , and more.
“We are as interested as anyone in knowing which parcels will be up for bid,” said Mike Chadsey, spokesman for the Ohio Oil and Gas Association.
Others fought to stop drilling before it began. The Environmental Council of Ohio filed a lawsuit in April to block the new law from taking effect. The case is ongoing, but a Franklin County judge has denied a request to temporarily halt the leasing process.
Meanwhile, Save Ohio Parks, a grassroots organization made up of several environmental activists, led a public relations and letter-writing campaign aimed at stopping or slowing the leasing process.
“We want the commission to refuse all hydraulic fracturing applications submitted to it. They can do it and they should do it,” said Save Ohio Parks steering committee member Roxanne Groff. “Thousands of people asked them to do it. The commission must listen to the people.
While the new law allows surface interruptions on state lands, DeWine promised his administration would not allow as much in state parks. From a practical standpoint, this means that if the commission authorizes fracking in national parks, the drilling will take place on private property around the parks. From there, drillers drilled thousands of feet underground before turning horizontally to release oil and gas through the process of hydraulic fracturing, better known as “hydraulic fracturing.”
David Yoxtheimer, a professor in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences at Penn State University, reviewed the land nominations that will be decided by the commission. He said one thing that stood out is that many of them are small areas or long, narrow stretches. This suggests that drillers already have rights to some surrounding land.
The distance between the wells and these new plots supports this idea.
“I have not gone into detail about the existing surface conditions for each parcel, but they should not be affected since the drilling platforms are thousands of feet away in most cases,” he said. declared.
Daniel Sherwood is a staff writer at Capitol Forum Upstream, which tracks and analyzes gas production in the Appalachian Basin. He noticed two geological trends in lease applications.
As for the Salt Fork, he said, even though Guernsey County is awash with wells and pipelines, the park area has remained largely untouched. But with the other three sites, there is little oil and gas production around them. This suggests that the interest is speculative in nature – they are not surefire money makers.
“It’s in an area where drillers are reducing what they’re doing and reducing their exploration efforts,” he said.
The possibility of Ohio entering into long-term financial agreements with gas companies comes as the effects of global warming become more evident. July this year was the hottest in 174 years on Earth, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This happened as smoke from Canadian wildfires spread across the United States, creating hazy, sepia-toned cityscapes. Earth is likely to cross a key threshold of global warming in the next decade, according to New York Times coverage of a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and nations must abandon fossil fuels to prevent the planet from overheating.
As Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer reported, two entities linked to the gas industry submitted hundreds of public comments in support of land leasing. Nearly 150 of the people named in the letters, including a nine-year-old child and an older blind woman, have denied ever allowing anyone to use their names. Attorney General Dave Yost later announced an investigation and pending subpoenas following the report.
Legislation that revived the long-dormant state rental program was passed under unusual circumstances. The Ohio House initially passed House Bill 507, non-controversial legislation addressing the sale of poultry chicks. One senator called it in a speech the “chicken bill.”
Senate Republicans, in the final days of the two-year General Assembly, stuffed it with unrelated amendments. One essentially forced state agencies to lease their land to any qualified bidder who applied until OGLMC rolled out its rules; a second redefines natural gas (methane, a fossil fuel) as “green energy”; a third blocked cities from regulating various pesticides. From there, the legislation passed quickly along partisan lines.
The lawsuit seeking to block the law alleges that lawmakers ignored two constitutional rules — one limiting most legislation to a single subject and another requiring bills to be “considered” by each chamber three times. State prosecutors denied it and defended the law as constitutional.
If OGLMC votes to approve an appointment, it will be put out to open bidding in the following calendar quarter, according to Ohio Department of Natural Resources spokesman Andy Chow. Once the OGLMC accepts the “highest and best” offer, the state agency that owns the land must enter into the lease.
The commission is scheduled to meet at 10 a.m. Monday at the Ohio Department of Natural Resources office at 2045 Morse Road in Columbus.
Jake Zuckerman covers politics and state policy for Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer.
