Earthquakes should slow down rush for riches in Ohio shale

The gold rush is on in Ohio. But in this 21st-century rush to riches, prospectors are out to make their fortune in oil and natural gas.

They're betting on big returns from expanded oil and gas drilling in Ohio, especially in the eastern part of the state. That's where Marcellus and Utica Shale formations hold enticing potential for both oil and gas production.

"There's a lot of money being invested in Ohio right now, and a lot of energy companies doing a lot of ongoing activity to drill," said Terry Fleming, executive director of the Ohio Petroleum Council. In terms of new oil and gas production, he said, the state is positioned at the forefront of drilling.

Cheering the development is Republican Gov. John Kasich. With the Republican-led General Assembly, he has heralded the expansion of oil and gas drilling in the state as the advent of a boom economy in a recession-weary state.

Early on, he promoted industry interests. Oil companies wanted more public land to be opened for drilling and they got it, compliments of the governor.

He made state parks and wildlife areas in Ohio available to oil and gas exploration. He assured a wary public that removing barriers to drilling would bring a new revenue and jobs to a state hungry for both.

Ohioans were urged not to fret about what happened in other states when the rush to extract oil and gas from shale led to unacceptable risks. Drilling proponents insisted Ohio had the advantage of hindsight over what went wrong in states such as Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia, Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma.

Gas companies, eyeing the gas-rich Marcellus Shale in Ohio, claimed state regulations -- which they helped write -- were sufficient. Not to worry, they said: The dangers that accompanied similar operations elsewhere -- toxic spills, leaks, well-water contamination, and earthquakes -- had been effectively addressed in Ohio.

Try telling that to residents of the Mahoning Valley. Lord knows, they want to believe that oil and gas drilling will bring economic resurgence to depressed regions. But they're a bit rattled these days. Eleven earthquakes in one year in the Youngstown area will do that.

The most recent -- and largest -- quake in the area, a magnitude 4.0 temblor on New Year's Eve, shook the earth as far north as Toronto.

Curiously, all the Youngstown earthquakes occurred within 100 meters of injection wells used to dispose of wastewater from oil and gas drilling. The wells are a by-product of shale-gas extraction.

Drillers unlock reserves of natural gas and oil, buried miles below, with a horizontal drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. It blasts a huge volume of water, laced with chemicals and sand, deep underground to fracture layers of rock.

The high-pressure maneuver forces out natural gas that is trapped in fissures. Most of the millions of gallons of water pushed underground stays there, but some of the briny waste returns to the surface.

Injecting it back into the ground at great depths, with disposal wells, avoids cleanup costs. Yet evidently, injection wells are not a fail-safe option, particularly when unknown faults may exist in close proximity.

Seismologists suggest that the daily injection of thousands of gallons of brine can agitate unstable rock formations, triggering tremors. Preliminary investigation of the Youngstown earthquakes likewise drew a link between recent seismic activity and wastewater injections.

State Rep. Robert Hagan (D., Youngstown) lives about a mile from the epicenter of the last quake and felt its power. He's not opposed to drilling, but like his constituents, he wants to know why the earth is moving in his district and what kind of chemicals are injected with wastewater into nearby wells.

"I think too many questions [about injection wells] have been left unanswered and we deserve to know what's going on," he said. He's called for a moratorium on injection wells, pending further study of the hazard to residents.

But the governor's office quickly rejected any large-scale limit on fracking for oil and gas in the states. What rattled Youngstown was framed as a drilling anomaly, warranting only limited precautions for a temporary period of time.

Republicans prefer hyping Ohio's prospects of drilling for shale riches to debating the perils of deep-well injection drilling. But balanced public policy is needed to assess drilling's risks and rewards.

Marilou Johanek is a columnist for The Blade.

Contact her at: mjohanek@theblade.com