State officials selected winning bids Monday worth a total of $242 million from a handful of out-of-state oil and gas companies to frack about 15,000 acres of state-owned preserved wildlife areas and state parkland in eastern Ohio.
The Ohio Oil and Gas Land Management Commission also rejected applications to open about 8,000 acres of land in the same area for development, given the crossover between those parcels and some of those that were bid out.
Despite the rejections, the votes from the Ohio Oil and Gas Land Management Commission amount to a significant expansion of Ohio’s three-year-old practice of leasing out its public lands to the fracking industry.
In this case, the decisions will allow access to natural gas trapped in shale thousands of feet underneath Egypt Valley and Jockey Hollow wildlife areas. The two expanses stretch over a hilly section of the state a few miles east of Piedmont Lake.
As the winning bidders, the OGLMC selected Grenadier Energy, of Texas for 8,236 acres of Egypt Valley; Gulfport Energy, of Oklahoma, for 4,360 acres of Egypt Valley and 383 acres of Jockey Hollow; and Ascent Resources, of Oklahoma, for about 1,461 acres of Jockey Hollow.
The OGLMC also selected a bid from Infinity Natural Resources, of West Virginia, for an additional 513 acres of Salt Fork State Park. The company previously purchased mineral rights to 5,700 acres of the park for about $54.6 million, plus 20% in royalty costs.
The $242 million comes before royalty payments that call for the companies to pay the state between 18% and 19% of all oil and gas produced.
Shouts, jeers and heckling against fracking approvals
The meeting, as has become commonplace, took place over shouts, jeers and heckling from a crowd of environmentalists, who say the OGLMC is something of a rubber-stamping clearing house that inevitably ends up voting for development.
“You know what we would find helpful. If you jump off a bridge,” one yelled, loud enough to seem to startle the commissioners.
Acceptance of the bids came despite near-unanimous opposition to the projects in public comments considered by the OGLMC itself.
“Public lands are meant for conservation, recreation, and long-term stewardship, not short-term extraction,” said Rebecca Montag in a public comment. “Continuing to approve these projects threatens water quality, ecosystems, and public trust in this process.”
Republican lawmakers and Gov. Mike DeWine enacted the current legal process via 2023 legislation, an omnibus package that contained other provisions protecting the use of pesticides in Ohio and declared natural gas, a major contributor to climate change, as “green energy.” The OGLMC, led by appointees of the governor, has since approved most industry requests as they’ve rolled in.
DeWine’s administration has said it will not allow development on surface lands of parks and wildlife areas. Instead, it requires companies to drill down vertically thousands of feet before turning laterally and reaching out several miles. From the bore holes, drillers spray a mixture of water, sand and chemicals at high pressure to free gas from shale, and pump it all back to the surface to harvest the gas and dispose of liquid waste.
The state acquired the land at both Egypt Valley and Jockey Hollow with conservation in mind. Ohio got Egypt Valley via the Wildlife Restoration Act, which uses money from a special tax on guns and bullets to buy land for conservation purposes. Consol Energy gave Ohio what’s now Jockey Hollow after it was “extensively” surface mined between 1958 and 1968, according to ODNR.
This story has been updated to include the value of the winning bids.