Friday, April 20, 2012 at 4:56PM Energy company seeks water from eastern Ohio reservoir for fracking
By Bob Downing
Beacon Journal staff writer
Published: April 17, 2012 - 10:25 PM | Updated: April 18, 2012 - 07:39 AM
The Muskingum Conservancy Watershed District is expected to vote Friday on allowing an energy company to tap into a lake in eastern Ohio for fracking water.
Oklahoma-based Gulfport Energy Corp. wants to take up to 11 million gallons of water from Clendening Reservoir in Harrison County to hydraulically fracture, or frack, a natural gas well it is developing.
The watershed district’s governing board will be asked to approve a temporary water agreement with Gulfport. The price has not been finalized, officials said.
Clendening Reservoir typically holds about 8.6 billion gallons of water.
A temporary pipeline would be built to move the water from the lake to the drilling site, district spokesman Darrin Lautenschleger said.
He said that would eliminate between 900 and 1,200 one-way trips by tanker trucks.
The district, based in New Philadelphia, signed a lease with Gulfport last year on 6,400 acres at Clendening Reservoir.
It was paid a signing bonus of $2,800 per acre plus a 16 percent royalty on any gas or oil produced.
From the signing bonus, the district is using $15.6 million to defray debts and make infrastructure improvements to recreational facilities, Lautenschleger said.
The water agreement with Gulfport marks the first contract approved by the district to provide water to a company drilling into Ohio’s Utica shale formation thousands of feet underground.
The pact would allow the district to cut off water delivery if recreational or environmental problems surface, Lautenschleger said, but officials do not anticipate any problems.
In the past, the district has provided water on a temporary basis for farmers suffering from major droughts, he said.
The watershed district has had inquiries from a dozen drilling companies about selling water from six of its reservoirs in eastern Ohio.
The district’s 18-judge panel, known as the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy Court, is expected to deal on June 2 with a selling price for water that could allow additional deals to advance.
Last month, the district signed an agreement with the U.S. Geological Survey to assess the effect of withdrawing water from three lakes: Atwood Lake in Carroll and Tuscarawas counties, Leesville in Carroll County and Clendening, Lautenschleger said.
That study would give the district a better idea what could happen if large volumes of water were sold to drillers, he said.
The district owns 54,000 acres of land and water in 13 counties, from the Akron area south to the Ohio River. Included are 14 reservoirs.
The other reservoirs where drillers have inquired about water are Leesville, Senecaville Lake in Noble and Guernsey counties and Tappan Lake in Harrison County.
Chesapeake Energy Corp., the No. 1 oil-gas player in eastern Ohio, is buying water from the city of Steubenville. It has also purchased water from other communities and from landowners with wells being drilled.
Some drilling companies have legally tapped water from small streams in eastern Ohio.
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