COLUMBUS, Ohio — 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 have 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 De Wine 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.
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 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 groundwater 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 memo also advised appealing to customers’ patriotism by emphasizing that China bought more oil than the U.S. last year. “Fear of foreign encroachment is the biggest asset we have in selling our development strategy,” it said.
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 hydraulic fracturing 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 with reports in Pennsylvania of environmental harm and contaminated private water wells and some waterways.
The controversy has risen at a critical political juncture when the Republican-led state Legislature and GOP Gov. John Kasich were poised to enact a new law allowing drilling on all Ohio state lands.
“For it to appear on the side of a road while this debate was going on is just too convenient,” said Tom Stewart, executive vice president of the Ohio Oil and Gas Association.
