A company has asked state officials to open Monroe Lake Wildlife Area in eastern Ohio to oil and gas development, making the preserve the newest target for industry exploration on public lands.
Drillers are proposing to tap into oil and gas reserves under about 618 acres of the 1,333-acre Monroe County expanse, which is popular among hunters and fishers.
The Ohio Oil and Gas Land Management Commission, a panel of gubernatorial appointees, will rule on the application. In practice, the panel has almost always granted industry requests, which opens a round of competitive bidding for the mineral rights.
Statehouse Republicans in 2021 forcibly revived what was essentially a dormant program that allowed state agencies to lease acreage owned by the public to the oil and gas industry. Since then, Ohio has opened 22,000 acres of its state parks and wildlife areas to fracking plays, exclusively awarded to out-of-state drillers.
That includes 6,200 acres of Salt Fork State Park, 14,800 at the neighboring Jockey Hollow and Egypt Valley WIldlife areas, and smaller tracts of land mostly around eastern and southeastern Ohio.
All told, Ohio has received $314 million so far from the sales, mostly through signing bonuses. Some of the first royalty payments on production rolling were received this summer. About one-third of the money goes to the park that hosted the drilling, with the rest generally flowing to state coffers.
When Republican Gov. Mike DeWine signed the new program into law, he said his administration would only approve projects that don’t disturb surface land at parks. At all projects considered to date, applicants propose plans that entail drilling thousands of feet downward from well pads just outside the park before turning 90 degrees and reaching shale underneath.
From the bore hole, drillers pump a mixture of water, sand and chemicals at high pressure to free gas from the shale. They pump up the mix of gas and brine, and industrial waste, back up to the surface.
Next governor will oversee future leases
Every Ohio public lands leasing deal to date with the fracking industry has fallen on DeWine’s administration. The future of Monroe Lake, however, may be in the hands of the next governor.
A public comment period on the application is open until Nov. 30. The OGLMC must act within 90 days of the receipt of the nomination, meaning its deadline comes after the inauguration of a new governor unless the DeWine administration rushes it through.
The Republican candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, has indicated support for fracking state parks by shooting videos supporting Ohio’s fracking industry from one of the biggest such projects in Ohio at Salt Fork.
He’s running against Democratic Dr. Amy Acton. The campaign in a statement said that while Acton supports fracking among other energy production resources, she thinks state forests and wildlife areas should be left alone.