43
Mysterious notebook fuels feud over gas, oil leases
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Photo
In this May 27, 2011 photo, T.J. Turner stands in his yard in Yellow Springs, Ohio, near a sign protesting the practice of fracking, a process used to extract oil or natural gas from hard rock formations. Turner is a local resident who was approached by a salesman for an energy exploration company to lease rights for drilling on his property. (AP Photo/Jay LaPrete)
Associated Press
COLUMBUS
A memo that appears to coach buyers of oil- and gas-drilling leases to use deceptive tactics on unsuspecting landowners has provoked a state investigation and spirited debate in rural Ohio, the latest frontier in America’s quest for new energy resources.
The tale of the found memo — unauthenticated but with language similar to that used by a seller familiar to Greene County residents — features aggressive marketers, zealous environmentalists and vulnerable residents.
So high are the stakes in the rush to lock up leases of fuel-rich Marcellus and Utica shale lands that Ohio’s top law-enforcement official investigated the notebook one resident found near her driveway in April. Was it really a playbook for a “landman,” one of the door-to-door energy company representatives who’ve blanketed shale regions in the Northeast for months, coaxing landowners to lease in hopes that drillers strike it rich in their backyards?
Attorney General Mike DeWine could find no evidence it belonged to Jim Bucher, a landman for West Bay Exploration Co., based in Traverse City, Mich., or that it was used to mislead area residents. Yet his investigation also stopped short of identifying an alternative owner, leaving the memo’s true origins a mystery.
To promote a positive public image in the aftermath, Ohio’s oil-and-gas industry has had statewide trainings and intensified a public-relations effort. A local environmental leader wants the notebook fingerprinted.
After several encounters with Bucher, Laura Skidmore found the memo inside a crushed three-ring binder. It had no corporate logo. No letterhead. No owner’s name. She told The Associated Press she was stunned by its contents.
“I opened it up and thought, ‘Oh my god,’” she said.
The papers appear to instruct landmen in how to talk to residents they visit: Don’t mention ground- water contamination or lost property values; downplay natural-gas drilling (believed to be a greater environmental threat than oil drilling); and describe the hydraulic-fracturing drilling process as “radioactive free,” even though the memo concedes that is not accurate.
The vast stores of natural gas in the Marcellus Shale have set off a feverish rush by drillers in neighboring Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and Ohio is poised to join the fray. Permits allowing “fracking” in Ohio’s portion of the Marcellus and the deeper Utica Shale have risen from one in 2006, to four in 2009, to 32 so far this year, state records show.
The fracking process uses huge volumes of water mixed with chemicals and sand to fracture shale rock deep underground and free natural gas. Its promise of riches to landowners has been tempered in recent months with reports in Pennsylvania of environmental harm, contaminated private water wells and some waterways.
Amid what one oil-and-gas industry executive calls Ohio’s “Landman-gate,” not one drilling lease has been filed in Greene County, where the five-page memo was found.
That has fueled a theory that it was created by an environmentalist wanting to taint the industry and discourage the controversial drilling technique.
Another theory is that the memo was planted by a rival company in the intensely competitive push to exploit the shale riches.
Officials of West Bay Exploration Co. — the only drilling company that was seeking leases in Greene County at the time — insist the notebook did not belong to Bucher, a 20-year company veteran. West Bay declined to make him available for an interview.