By Justin Dennis

jdennis@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

Mahoning County now has rights to any Utica shale deposits underneath county-owned land in Canfield under a new lease agreement with Ohio Valley Energy.

“Under the current old leases, the gas company actually has the rights all the way from the surface to the center of the Earth,” Tim Tusek, the assistant county prosecutor who worked on the arrangements, told county commissioners Tuesday.

“The best part is there is a real possibility the Utica development will come back to this area, and when it does, the commissioners will be in a position to be able to benefit from it,” Tusek said.

The five shallow Clinton sandstone wells are beneath about 270 county-owned acres along Columbiana-Canfield Road, just west of the Canfield Fairgrounds. That land is also leased by Mill Creek MetroParks for the Mahoning County Experimental Farm.

The county’s original lease for the wells was signed in 1984 and is set to expire this month. The new agreement with Ohio Valley Energy extends the lease another 15 years and offers the county rights to any minerals below and a 15-percent royalty payment from each sale of oil and gas Ohio Valley produces there.

The wells were drilled about 30 years ago and were sold to the Austintown-based well operator at the end of 2015, said Charlie Masters, Ohio Valley Energy president.

Masters said his company doesn’t drill anymore, and it’s not permitted to drill below the top of the Queenston geological formation, Tusek added, meaning Utica drillers would need a separate lease with the county.

Tusek said some shale development is still happening near the border of Mahoning and Columbiana counties, including Springfield and Unity townships, but gas drillers led a Mahoning Valley “gold rush” about five years ago.

“Back 30 years ago, nobody had ever contemplated the possibility of ever doing anything beyond the shallow wells,” he said. “This is all new technology ... in terms of decades.”

No complaints about the wells have been reported to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and department inspections done between 2007 and 2009 showed no violations, according to ODNR records.

Jane Spies, a member of Frackfree Mahoning Valley, which opposes hydraulic fracturing wells due to their proposed risk to underground water supplies and contribution to seismic activity, said the group would oppose any new deep-well drilling in the area.