Gas drilling surges in Ohio; brings jobs, worries

In this Nov. 30, 2011 photo, anti-fracking pro­tes­tors carry signs while protest­ing in front of The Cov­elli Cen­ter near down­town Youngstown, where the Youngstown Ohio Utica & Nat­ural Gas Con­fer­ence & Expo took place. For eager energy com­pa­nies and Repub­li­can Gov. John Kasich, inter­est in the gas and oil lying in wait under Ohio is an unbeat­able oppor­tu­nity for the state’s ail­ing econ­omy. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Mark Stahl)

JULIE CARR SMYTH

Asso­ci­ated Press

COLUMBUS — After a child­hood spent mov­ing around, Patti Gorch­eff vowed that she’d never uproot her daugh­ter. But she says waste­water dis­posal in her area from an oil and gas drilling frenzy that’s hit Ohio and other states has forced her to change her mind.

She and her hus­band are sell­ing the fam­ily home and flee­ing with their 15-year-old before the drink­ing water becomes con­t­a­m­i­nated, said Gorch­eff, 56, of rural North Lima in north­east­ern Ohio. She’s heard the accounts from neigh­bor­ing Penn­syl­va­nia of contaminant-laced water being dis­charged into rivers — and of fears there that, despite offi­cials’ assur­ances, drink­ing water might be harmed.

“I’ve never been so afraid,” she said. “They’re tak­ing advan­tage of us because we’re one of the poor­est areas in the coun­try. We have to move out of this area, we just have to.

“I just don’t know what else to do at this point. I just don’t trust these people.”

The drilling activ­ity promises huge oppor­tu­nity for eager energy com­pa­nies and, says Repub­li­can Gov. John Kasich, for Ohio’s strug­gling econ­omy. The vast Mar­cel­lus and Utica shale for­ma­tions are already pay­ing off in thou­sands of wells in Penn­syl­va­nia and West Vir­ginia, bring­ing great wealth to landown­ers and jobs through­out the region.

“We’re talk­ing about a gen­er­a­tion who have lived in poverty and this is an oppor­tu­nity to pull them out,” Kasich told The Asso­ci­ated Press in an interview.

What he views as an oppor­tu­nity and Gorch­eff and other res­i­dents view with skep­ti­cism is the 5 bil­lion bar­rels of recov­er­able oil under­neath them, mak­ing Ohio the lat­est bat­tle­ground between com­pa­nies eager to profit off of the oil and landown­ers who want a more mea­sured look at the poten­tial impact.

Even before Kasich took office in Jan­u­ary, his team worked on a strat­egy to exploit the energy riches embed­ded in the Mar­cel­lus and deeper Utica shale for­ma­tions under east­ern Ohio.

He’s taken his wel­come mes­sage directly to Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Shell and Chesa­peake, and in April, Ohio opened its parks and other pub­lic lands to drilling as part of the push.

The state issued a sin­gle per­mit for drilling in the Utica Shale in 2009, and two per­mits in 2010. As of Dec. 4, 131 per­mits were issued this year, records showed. A sim­i­lar trend is occur­ring in the state’s less per­va­sive Mar­cel­lus Shale deposits, where six per­mits were issued between 2006 and 2010, and 10 have been issued this year.

A com­bined 87 of those per­mits are for hydraulic frac­tur­ing, or frack­ing, a drilling tech­nique where chemical-laced water is blasted into the ground to break the shale and free oil and gas. Twenty such wells have been drilled.

Kasich said he is pur­su­ing reg­u­la­tions that pro­tect res­i­dents, pub­lic health and the envi­ron­ment while encour­ag­ing busi­ness growth, and he’s warned com­pa­nies that destroy­ing Ohio’s envi­ron­ment is not an option.

“We want to make sure we get this right,” he said. “We can’t have wild­cat­ters just com­ing in here and strip­ping us of what we have in the state and leaving.”

Ohio res­i­dents like Tish O’Dell of the Cleve­land sub­urb of Broad­view Heights are skep­ti­cal. O’Dell said many of her neigh­bors were vul­ner­a­ble to deals offered by lease buy­ers, known as land­men, because of the down econ­omy. One woman, she said, had no idea such destruc­tion would occur.

“One day, they started clear­ing trees behind her house,” O’Dell said. “She looks out her kitchen win­dow and all she sees is these three wells. This was going to be her dream home.”

Some peo­ple are try­ing to form a group they’ll call Moth­ers Against Drilling in Our Neigh­bor­hoods to orga­nize protests and raise aware­ness , O’Dell said. The 86 tra­di­tional wells now per­mit­ted in the 13 square miles com­mu­nity have meant clogged roads, downed trees, spoiled views and envi­ron­men­tal wor­ries for Broad­view Heights’ roughly 17,000 residents.

In Greene County in south­west Ohio, cit­i­zen activists turned over a mys­te­ri­ous note­book to Attor­ney Gen­eral Mike DeWine this year that appeared to coach lease buy­ers to use decep­tive tac­tics on unsus­pect­ing landown­ers. DeWine is investigating.

In Youngstown, near Gorcheff’s home, the state has installed mon­i­tor­ing equip­ment to help deter­mine whether a series of minor earth­quakes in north­east Ohio are result­ing from the deep injec­tion into the earth of chem­i­cal– and sand-laced brine that’s a byprod­uct of oil drilling and frack­ing. An aver­age of 84,000 gal­lons of the brine is injected into a well near the epi­cen­ter of the activ­ity daily, most shipped in through a con­tract with neigh­bor­ing Penn­syl­va­nia. Ohio also recently agreed to take waste­water from Texas.

State Rep. Nickie Anto­nio, a sub­ur­ban Cleve­land Demo­c­rat, said she doesn’t believe Ohio has ade­quately assessed the poten­tial impacts on ground­wa­ter and the envi­ron­ment from such activ­ity because the process is mov­ing so quickly.

“The fact that the wells have been able to move into the sub­ur­ban com­mu­ni­ties where the homes are so close to each other, it bog­gles the mind,” she said. “It has to be seen to be believed.”

Anto­nio and fel­low Democ­rats in the Republican-controlled state leg­is­la­ture have pushed bills that call for a mora­to­rium on drilling and require pub­lic dis­clo­sure of the chem­i­cals used in the process, some of which are known carcinogens.

“It is alto­gether rea­son­able, appro­pri­ate, and urgent to call a time­out on Ohio’s black gold rush,” said Jack Shaner, deputy direc­tor of the Ohio Envi­ron­men­tal Coun­cil, one of dozens of groups that signed on to the mora­to­rium proposal.

The pro­posal has gone nowhere in Ohio. New York has imposed such a mora­to­rium as it assesses the poten­tial envi­ron­men­tal impacts.

Sev­eral high-profile envi­ron­men­tal con­t­a­m­i­na­tion cases have arisen in neigh­bor­ing Penn­syl­va­nia, one of five states where the U.S. Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency has begun exam­in­ing drilling sites.

Attor­ney Sean Moran, who rep­re­sents oil and gas com­pa­nies at work in Ohio, Penn­syl­va­nia and West Vir­ginia, down­played the risks.

“The inci­dents of any envi­ron­men­tal prob­lem are extremely rare,” he said, not­ing that unusual events grab head­lines. “There’s not much of a story in say­ing — OK, well No. 9,678 was drilled safely, well No. 9,679 … safely. The things that catch atten­tion are the exceptions.”

Kasich said he is work­ing hard to ensure drilling oper­a­tions are envi­ron­men­tally responsible.

“First of all, it’s the right thing to do pro­tect the envi­ron­ment of our state. Sec­ond, it’s smart busi­ness,” he said. “If you did this irre­spon­si­bly, you would pay the price and in the end would wind up los­ing the jobs you’re try­ing to create.”

In a let­ter he sent to CEOs of 44 shale-related com­pa­nies this spring, Kasich made his case.

“I have high expec­ta­tions for the pos­i­tive eco­nomic impact that your indus­try can have for Ohio and I need your com­mit­ment to respon­si­ble cor­po­rate cit­i­zen­ship to make that pos­si­ble,” he wrote.

He called for safe oper­a­tions that fol­low the law.

“Ohio won’t set­tle for any­thing less,” he added.

Col­leges, uni­ver­si­ties and busi­ness orga­ni­za­tions have offered resources to the effort.

The Ohio Cham­ber of Com­merce, which endorsed Kasich in his bid for gov­er­nor, has com­mis­sioned a study on the poten­tial eco­nomic impacts of all the shale activ­ity. The report is expected in January.

“There are so many ways this is going to touch our econ­omy: increased lease pay­ments, actual drilling, pro­duc­ers’ imme­di­ate sup­pli­ers, hotels, restau­rants, less-expensive energy,” said exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent Linda Woggon.

Ohio Com­mon Cause, a non­profit cit­i­zen advo­cacy group, issued a report last month that sug­gests the indus­try is also affect­ing politi­cians’ cam­paign cof­fers. Kasich led recip­i­ents at the state level, with about $214,000 in dona­tions, fol­lowed by his pre­de­ces­sor, Demo­c­rat Ted Strick­land, with about $88,000.

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