A state board voted Monday to open about 6,600 combined acres of public lands from both the Jockey Hollow and Egypt Valley Wildlife areas in eastern Ohio to the natural gas industry.
The Oil and Gas Land Management Commission also selected Grenadier Energy, of Texas, as the winning bidder for mineral rights beneath about 172 acres of the Leesville Wildlife Area in Carroll County. The company will pay about $1 million as a signing bonus and will pay an additional 18% royalty payment on sales of gas produced, a state spokeswoman said.
Grenadier didn’t respond to an inquiry.
The votes Monday continue a steady march of Ohio’s relatively new legal process that enables oil and gas companies to pay the state for leasing rights to drill and extract from beneath publicly owned parks, designated wildlife areas, roadways, and as of Monday, even a state prison in Noble County.
Commissioners voted to approve the applications, one after another, with almost no substantive discussion over each proposal. Toward the end of the meeting, the commissioners held votes over jeers from environmental advocates calling the roll calls “rubber stamps.” The audience’s tone matched the written public comments, which overwhelmingly opposed each proposed fracking project.
“No other state in the country allows fracking of its state parks,” said Cathy Cowan Becker, a member of Save Ohio Parks, speaking to the commissioners Monday. “Our parks and wildlife areas were set aside for the use and enjoyment of all Ohioans. These lands are meant to be protected. Fracking them is a betrayal of the public trust and future generations.”
The hearing continued a bitter dispute between a natural gas-aligned legislature, a state board the lawmakers created carrying out its directives, and environmentalists who say they have been shut out from the political process, all over what to do with protected, public lands that sit on troves of natural gas.
Theresa White, an attorney and chief operating officer of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, chaired the meeting and read the technical language to tee up each vote. She said in an interview afterward that public opinion is only one factor the commission considers, along with others like finances, current land use, environment, geology or impacts to visitors.
However, she said nothing legally requires the commission to explain its decisions.
“There’s a number of factors that we’re considering,” she said. “We’re trying to look at all of the factors that are before us. So the outcome is showing the effectuation of looking at all of those factors together, all at once.”
Ohio parks open to fracking
For Egypt Valley and Jockey Hollow wildlife areas, the commission’s vote triggers a competitive bidding process. State law shields the identity of the company that asked the state to open the land until after a winning bidder is chosen.
The two projects, 4,360 acres and 1,461 acres respectively, are the largest on public lands behind only Salt Fork State Park, which the state leased to West Virginia-based Infinity Natural Resources for $58 million as a signing bonus plus a 20% royalty on all produced oil and gas.
For Leesville Wildlife Area – 394 acres of Carroll County – this is the second project approved by the commission. The commission previously leased about 62 acres to Texas-based Encino Energy for a $219,000 signing bonus and 18% of revenue from the project. At least 30% of the money the state makes from the deal must go toward capital projects at the park.
Ohio has previously opened smaller tracts of land at Valley Run Wildlife Area, Keen Wildlife Area, and Zepernick Wildlife Area to industry developers.
The state’s ownership of the public lands at issue Monday traces back to federal land conservation efforts.
At both Leesville and Egypt Valley, ODNR bought the land in the mid- to late-20th century using funds provided by the Wildlife Restoration Act, which uses tax money from guns and bullets to buy land for conservation purposes. In Leesville’s case, the state bought the land to protect local racoons, squirrels, grouse and others.
In Jockey Hollow’s case, the state took ownership of the land after it was strip-mined by Consol Energy.
The current public lands leasing process began in 2011, when statehouse Republicans launched an effort to allow gas companies to tap into gas reserves below certain state lands. However, political resistance under the gubernatorial administrations of John Kasich and Mike DeWine, both Republicans, effectively blocked any leasing efforts.
The legislature responded with legislation to forcibly revive the program in 2022, while also declaring that natural gas – the common term for methane, a climate-change-causing atmospheric heat trapper – is a form of “green energy.”