Neighbors worry as Ohio commission OKs more drilling beneath public land

Yahoo

08-04-2025

The Gray well pad. (Photo by Nick Evans, Ohio Capital Journal.)
Late last month, Ohio officials gave Texas-based Encino Energy the green light to begin drilling under the Leesville Wildlife Area in Carrol County. The company's winning bid includes almost a quarter million dollars upfront and 18% of the well's future revenue.
The Oil and Gas Land Management Commission has signed off on drilling beneath four state wildlife areas and Ohio's biggest state park since it began approving bids two years ago.
Environmentalist groups have consistently opposed to the process without much success. An explosion earlier this year just outside Salt Fork State Park has only heightened those concerns. As commissioners approve more bids, opponents worry the next accident will damage public land.
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Austin Warehime grew up just outside Salt Fork State Park. As a kid, his dad would take him hiking or fishing in the park. He learned to drive in a Salt Fork parking lot and bought a truck with money he earned working at the park's golf course.
At more than 17,000 acres, it's the state's largest park, and it sits right in the middle of Eastern Ohio's fracking boom.
Warehime eventually moved away, got a law degree, and then decided to come back after he and his wife had a kid. Now he works for a local law firm representing landowners in negotiations over their mineral rights.
'The views here are honestly as broad as the spectrum that you can devise,' he said during a recent visit.
Plenty of residents fit in the 'drill, baby, drill' camp, Warehime acknowledged, but there are also those who steadfastly oppose fracking. In between, 'there's a large contingent of people here who are fine with fracking being here and existing on private lands, and with private landowners making their own decisions.'
He chalked that up to a strain of 'mind your own business' libertarianism running through Appalachian communities.
'But when it comes to fracking on public lands,' he added, 'There's a large group of people in that middle there that just aren't entirely convinced that what's going on at Salt Fork is the right thing to do with our public lands.'
Earlier this year, the park began to see the fruits of opening public land to drillers. The Ohio Controlling Board signed off on $9.6 million in improvements at Salt Fork including a new beach shelter and asphalt resurfacing this March. But even those projects leave a bitter taste for Warehime.
'Only 30% of the money is required to stay here at Salt Fork and stay here in in Guernsey County, in the Salt Fork region,' he said, referencing the state statute that divvies up royalties from drilling on public land.
'That means 70% of the money has no guarantees that it is going to be used for Guernsey County, Eastern Ohio, Salt Fork, any of that,' he said. 'I mean 70% of the money is leaving our region, and that's kind of the story of Appalachia history in a nutshell.'
On Jan. 2, an explosion at the Groh well pad closed down a stretch of U.S. Rt. 22, about five miles from the Salt Fork State Park entrance and just 3.5 miles from the park boundary. First responders determined the safest course of action was to let to storage tank burn itself out.
Warehime's sister lives across the road.
'You can just see the remnants of two of the large barrel-looking structures that that are on the well pad that burned and exploded,' he described. 'You can see how discolored they are. They're black, they're charred, and they're still standing there.'
The well pad sits a few hundred yards from the driveway where he was speaking.
'You can see it very clearly with the naked eye,' Warehime said. 'You don't have to squint or anything. It's close.'
Another home, on the same side of the road as the well pad, is even closer.
According to a fire department report, a tank holding drilling brine caught fire, and nearby tanks started heating up rapidly. First responders described the burning tank as 'cherry red' but decided putting the fire out would be risky.
'It was determined that the application of water might cause the cherry red steel of the tank to tear,' the report reads.
The tank burned for about 16 hours before it 'self-extinguished.'
In a statement not long after, Ohio Department of Natural Resources spokeswoman Karina Cheung said the agency was working with local fire officials to investigate what happened.
'All produced fluids have been safely removed,' she said. 'There was no release of fluids into the environment and the well pad remains shut down and inactive. There were no reported injuries, no reported impacts to wildlife, and no reported impacts to water.'
The fire department's report lists the cause of the explosion as 'undetermined.'
After an incident, the company is supposed to produce a follow up report within 30 days providing more detail on what happened and why. The Ohio Capital Journal has requested a copy of that report, but ODNR did not make it immediately available. The agency did not respond to follow up questions about the delay.
The company that operates the well pad, Gulfport Energy, has been fined in the past for safety violations, but does not appear to have received any punishment for the explosion in January.
The Capital Journal requested comment from the company about steps it's taken to improve safety, but didn't receive a response.
In February 2024, the commission approved a pair of bids from Infinity Natural Resources Ohio to drill beneath Salt Fork State Park. Between the two offers, Infinity put up close to $60 million for access to the park in addition to pledging 20% of its drilling revenue.
Although its Gray well pad is the first to stretch into the park, the pad itself is located about two miles away. On a recent afternoon, workers had set up a massive tower to extend the drill bore three-plus miles into Salt Fork.
'I haven't actually been out here to see that yet,' Warehime said, peering out the window. 'It's a little sobering to actually see it occurring.'
The well pad sits on a well-paved but narrow road not far from U.S. Rt. 70. There are a handful of other wells in the vicinity, and every couple hundred feet there are signs posted to direct truck traffic.
'One of the protections,' Warehime said with air quotes, 'is that all these producers have to have approval to drive on certain roads. There's one now telling Ascent Resources where they can go to access a well.'
'It's some protection,' he allowed, 'but that means they're still driving on these roads and tearing them up, and then the public is still paying the tax for that.'
Traffic near the Landman well underscored the issue. Big trucks passed in and out of the well site, less than a mile from the park entrance.
'There's another dump truck,' Warehime said. 'This is just a small county road, I mean, we've got to pull off to the side to let this go through.'
Environmentalists worry those close quarters aren't just dangerous for drivers. If a truck hauling away drilling brine got in an accident, a spill could be toxic.
The Landman well sits in a nook with Salt Fork surrounding it on three sides. The park entrance is just shy of a mile away as the crow flies, but the closest boundary is less than half a mile.
'This well was not permitted to go underneath of the park,' Warehime explained, 'so even though it's very close, it's going down, it's going right up to the edge of the park, and then it's shooting to the south.
'If you're out hiking at the park, or you're near the main entrance of the park, you're not really gonna notice any effects from the Gray pad,' he said. 'While they're actively drilling at Landman, you may actually hear (it) or see the flare from that.'
At the same meeting that the Oil and Gas Commission approved fracking beneath the Leesville Wildlife Area, they agreed to start accepting bids for two more parcels of state land. One covers a different part of the Leesville Wildlife Area and the other is land controlled by the Department of Transportation along State Road 149 in Belmont County.
Out-of-state company selected to lease land for fracking at Leesville Wildlife Area
Nominations for another wildlife area and state road right of way are teed up for the next meeting.
Continuing a longstanding pattern, public comments about the nominations were almost universally against them. But as the commission moved through its agenda, it took up one item after another, voting to advance them without discussion. Audience members interjected 'what were the public comments?' and 'what's the environmental impact?'
But the commission's motions and approvals marched forward undeterred. The whole effort took less than 14 minutes. Before Chairwoman Theresa White adjourned, Commissioner Jim McGregor attempted to defend their actions.
'ODNR, of course, has a number of scientific divisions that do review these and do make comments where they think its appropriate,' he said.
McGregor pointed to new limits on drilling operations to avoid interrupting hunting seasons and better protect water.
'It may seem like we're approving these without a lot of discussion,' he said, 'but there is a lot of discussion.'
The audience was unimpressed with the new lease terms.
One woman jeered, 'What do you want a medal?'
Follow Ohio Capital Journal Reporter Nick Evans on X or on Bluesky.
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