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CLEVELAND – Enough time has now elapsed to make a preliminary evaluation of oil and gas industry claims for the potential of the Ohio shale regions.
The blue line in the above chart shows the actual current number of producing wells in the Marcellus and Utica shale in Ohio, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
The chart also shows estimates from two industry-funded studies which have been used to promote the notion of an “Ohio shale boom.”
One set of estimates comes from a September, 2011 report done for the Ohio Oil and Gas Association by consultant Dr. Jack Kleinheinz. It estimates, for example, that in 2013 there would be 143 producing wells. This is 50% higher than the actual figure of 95.
Another set of estimates comes from a March 2, 2012 report paid for by the Ohio Shale Coalition, an oil and gas industry-funded group. The study was written by employees of Cleveland State University, Ohio State University and Marietta College. Only one year after the report was issued, the estimates, which the authors called “conservative,” are wildly wrong. For 2013, the study estimated 843 producing Ohio shale wells, more than eight times the actual figure of 95.
— Paul Ryder, Assistant Director, Ohio Citizen Action
 Data from Chesapeake Energy quarterly operational reports and presentations.
CLEVELAND – In September 2011, Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon declared that the Utica Shale was the “biggest thing economically to hit Ohio, since maybe the plow. . . .We know it’s big. How big is big? We don’t know and I can’t put volumes on it yet. [$500 billion?] I prefer to say half a trillion. It sounds bigger.”
As the above chart shows, Chesapeake Energy estimated it would be operating forty drilling rigs in the Utica Shale by the end of 2014. That prediction only lasted a few months. The number of rigs promptly stalled out at fourteen. This figure includes all rigs Chesapeake says it is operating in the Utica Shale in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia combined. The company does not provide rig counts broken down by state. The Utica Shale also lies underneath parts of five other states (Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, Maryland, and New York), the Canadian province of Ontario, and two Great Lakes, Erie and Ontario.
— Paul Ryder, Assistant Director, Ohio Citizen Action
 A standard radiation monitor, photographed at the Yukon facility of Max Energy Services on Friday, April 26, 2013. The standard radiatiion monitor counts per second as trucks hauling waste into the facility drives through. PITTSBURGH, PA — “State regulators, industry supporters and some scientists say that treating shale waste properly eliminates big health risk. But there are critics who argue that bringing large quantities of even low-level radioactive particles to the surface can lead to a slow, incremental build up of particles that people breathe or eat throughout their lifetimes.
The state began requiring radiation monitors at landfills in 2002 because of medical waste. But oil and gas waste — which brings up naturally occurring radiation formerly locked a mile or so underground — has become an increasing concern.
The spike in radiation alarms roughly corresponds shale drilling activity. Radiation detectors went off 423 times in 2008 and 1,325 times in 2012, according to DEP data. Gas drillers punched 335 new shale wells in 2008 and 1,354 new shale wells in 2012.”
— Timothy Puko, Pittsburgh Tribune Review
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 This pipeline being built near Scio is one of 95 such projects in Carroll and Harrison counties, according to Public Utilities Commission of Ohio records. FRED SQUILLANTE | Dispatch SCIO — “The workers are carving a miles-long trench for natural-gas-liquid pipelines that will connect to a massive gas-processing plant under construction just across Rt. 151.’I told the fellas I’m going to wear a parachute the rest of my life, and when that (pipeline) goes, I’m going to pull the rip cord,’ said Mrs. Snyder, 87. ‘It’s too close.’ By June, the plant is expected to start taking the gases that shale wells produce and split them into propane, butane and ethane.
Explosions seem unlikely, but a series of pipeline spills has critics crying foul.
Officials of the oil and gas industry said the pipelines and the plant are safe and vital to their plans to develop Ohio’s Utica shale.
A lack of natural-gas processing, industry officials say, keeps shale wells from delivering to buyers and has slowed the pace of drilling and fracking.”
— Spencer Hunt, Columbus Dispatch
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 Environmentalists say Maumee Bay, near Toledo, would have been a better target for FirstEnergy conservation work. (Photo by rayb777 via Creative Commons) OREGON — “A Clean Water Act settlement related to that and two other small oil spills at FirstEnergy plants means that the company will pay a $125,000 fine and donate 200 acres of wetlands along Lake Erie in northeast Ohio to a land conservancy.
The land targeted is about 60 miles from two of the plants that had the oil spills, in Cleveland and Lorain. And it’s more than 150 miles from Bayshore.
Maumee Bay and western Lake Erie are considered among the Great Lakes’ most troubled spots, plagued by nutrient pollution, toxic algae blooms, low oxygen levels, invasive species and other issues. Since the waters are very shallow, they are also critically impacted by effects of climate change including warming, evaporation and pollution from runoff during heavy rains.
Local advocates hoped the EPA’s settlement with FirstEnergy could play a small part in addressing some of these problems and helping to make up for Bayshore’s share of the impacts. They are disappointed and frustrated that the settlement is instead benefiting a distant and ecologically separate part of the lake.”
— Kari Lydersen, Midwest Energy News
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LEXINGTON, KY — “Market forces, not the regulators reviled by McConnell, are what’s killing the coal industry in Eastern Kentucky. And the industry is not rebounding any time soon, say experts, because the region’s thin seams are too costly to mine and therefore can’t compete on price.
That a big chunk of people also hold out hope that a coal boom could be ignited in Central Appalachia, if only Congress reined in the Environmental Protection Agency, is not surprising. Human nature craves simplicity over wrestling with complex, scary questions about the future. So the 39 percent who said ‘no’ can be forgiven.
What’s becoming unforgiveable is the eagerness of politicians like McConnell and his co-sponsor, Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., and a slew of Kentucky Democrats to oversimplify and demagogue the challenges facing the coal-mining regions of Central Appalachia.”
— editorial, Lexington Herald-Leader
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COLUMBUS — “American Municipal Power and FirstEnergy are scrapping plans to build jointly a gas-fired power plant in northeastern Ohio because of increased financing costs.
The project in Eastlake, announced in November, was going to generate power during periods of peak demand, meaning it would operate only on the hottest days of the year.
…The financing issues arise from the sequester, a series of federal budget cuts that took effect in March. Among the cuts was the amount of the subsidy for Build America Bonds and other bonds that cities can use to help finance power-plant construction.”
— Dan Gearino, Columbus Dispatch
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 Gov. John Kasich YOUNGSTOWN — “Gov. John Kasich, on a visit to the Mahoning Valley today, balked at a proposed charter amendment to ban fracking in Youngstown.
As voters at polling stations across the city cast their vote on the matter, which has been a contentious one among the activists that are pushing for the ban and the businesses afraid that it will turn the oil and gas industry away from Youngstown, Kasich said he hadn’t worried much about the effort or similar proposals across the state.
‘We haven’t seen many efforts like this. People of the state of Ohio overwhelmingly support [the industry],’ Kasich said. ‘It’s an industry that’s been around for 40 or 50 years and there’s just some scattered opposition.’
‘This is a state that is openly embracing this,’ Kasich added. ‘We’ll see what the people of the city do, you know, but I don’t spend any time worrying about this because at the end of the day there’s massive support for the development of oil and gas in the state of Ohio and the jobs that are connected to it — that’s what matters most.’”
— The Vindicator
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 A brine injection well owned by Northstar Disposal Services is seen in Youngstown. YOUNGSTOWN — “Youngstown voters rejected a proposal Tuesday that would have banned hydraulic fracturing — or fracking — within city limits.
The amendment — called a Community Bill of Rights — was defeated by a margin of 14 percent, with 57 percent voting against and 43 percent for.
‘We feel like it’s a sad day for democracy,’ said Susie Beiersdorfer of Frackfree Mahoning Valley, an activist group that spearheaded the effort to get it on the ballot. ‘We put a lot of effort into it, got more than 4,000 signatures. We still believe that a lot of people in this city don’t believe in fracking.’”
— Rachel Morgan, shalereporter.com
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 Robert U. Ayres NEW YORK, NY — “No one is questioning the fact that we have either reached or will soon reach ‘peak oil’; that existing fields are being depleted at the rapid rate of 7 percent a year, and that the search is on for ‘unconventional oil’ as alternative forms of energy are slow to reach critical mass.
There are many kinds of ‘unconventional oil’ – meaning hydrocarbons that are not found in fluid form, but that can be ‘fluidised’ in a straightforward way (unlike coal, for instance). These resources include Venezuelan heavy oil and Canadian tar sands.
But the big change in the last two decades is shale gas and ‘tight oil’ – a liquid, trapped in shale (rock), where it doesn’t flow naturally but can be extracted by horizontal drilling and ‘fracking’. Fracking uses high-pressure water to fracture the shale and then chemicals that reduce the viscosity of the oil trapped in the interstices of the rock and allow it to flow.”
— Robert U. Ayres, Proffesor of Economics and Political Science and Technology Management INSEAD
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LISBON — “The Columbiana County Port Authority is being told by the state to repay $305,500 awarded the agency for the defunct Baard Energy project.
The Ohio Development Services Agency (DSA), formerly the Department of Development, awarded the port authority the money in 2007 to help secure options on land in Yellow Creek Township for Baard’s proposed coal-to-liquid fuel plant.
The grant was tied to the creation of 200 jobs, which never materialized after Baard ran into financing problems and eventually sold out in 2011 to Planck Trading, an investment firm that proceeded to use its money to acquire the remaining 400 acres. Nothing has happened since with the project.”
— Tom Giambroni, Lisbon Morning Journal
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 A bus and truck with Texas license plates and registered to CGG Veritas are pictured outside of a Super 8 Motel in South Union Township, Fayette County, on Friday. SOUTH UNION TWP, PA — “’The Marcellus is an important new industry, and there’s certainly no question that is has, over the last several years, created employment in Pennsylvania,’ said Mark Price, labor economist for the Keystone Research Center. ‘But it remains the fact that employment overall in that sector — you’re talking about something that is less than 0.5 percent of the workforce … a tiny portion of all the jobs.’
Yet industry groups such as the Marcellus Shale Coalition continue to tout the industry’s job creation, citing numbers in the millions for new jobs created by shale.”
— Rachel Morgan, Shale Reporter
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WARREN — “Diana Marchese, Trumbull County recorder, said the decreasing number of leases being recorded at her office is further evidence that title research is on the wane.
The peak time for leases being recorded was the first four months of 2012, when there were 7,412. The number dropped to 4,592 for the May-to-August period, down to 2,590 for the September to December 2012 period. They dropped even more — to 1,088 — for the first four months of 2013. The number for September to December 2011 was 3,433.
Marchese said the number of leases recorded is an indicator of title research and land-work activity. Another indicator is the number of title researchers coming into her office. The flow has nearly stopped, Marchese said.”
— Ed Runyon, Youngstown Vindicator
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Village works to protect its water
 Keith Riley of the Portage Health Department draws water from a spigot at a Garrettsville home. The village has invested in a water testing program to monitor the effects of nearby gas drilling and injection wells. GARRETSVILLE — “As the natural gas and oil industry continues to grow around Garrettsville and throughout northeast Ohio, the trustee on the village’s board of public affairs believes so do the risks of possible contamination of the municipal well.
The water source for 2,400 residents is located outside Garrettsville limits, leaving village officials with no control over the drilling locations for both production and waste disposal wells.
…As a result, this tiny village in eastern Portage County has become somewhat of a trendsetter after its board of public affairs voted unanimously to become the only municipality in Portage, Trumbull or Mahoning counties – and possibly in northeast Ohio – to allocate about $35,000 for a consultant’s study and the Portage County Board of Health to conduct in-depth sampling of ground water to establish baselines of the existing water quality.”
— Brenda J Linert, Warren Tribune Chronicle
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 Community activists gathered on North Meridian Road on Friday near this billboard to underscore what they believe is an important effort to preserve the well-being of Youngstown’s residents. YOUNGSTOWN — “Among the burdens of living near a drilling site, McCrudden said, are the noise, fumes, vibrations and bright lights that flood her property each night when operators illuminate the well pad.
Her way of life has been disrupted since Halcon began operations there months ago, she said.
Though drilling is unlikely to occur in Youngs-town’s urban core, exploration and production companies have been busy securing acreage on the city’s outskirts, as a land-grab has been underway in Mahoning County.
Voters in Youngstown will head to the polls Tuesday to vote on a proposed charter amendment that aims to ban fracking in Youngstown, or, at the very least, make it more difficult to set up operations here.”
— Jamison Cocklin, Youngstown Vindicator
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Letters supporting the Fracking Emergency Medical Right to Know Act 7,672 neighbors have sent handwritten letters and made personal phone calls urging state legislators to support the Fracking Emergency Medical Right to Know Act as of May 14, 2013.
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