Mysterious notebook fuels Ohio drilling feud, AP

http://www.silive.com/newsflash/index.ssf/story/mysterious-notebook-fuels-ohio-drilling-feud/79cb7cc7a8424fc5a41e2942a5889771

Mysterious notebook fuels Ohio drilling feud

Aug. 6, 2011, 8:54 p.m. EDT

Associated Press



COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — 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?

<snip>

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.

Much more at link.

Cheers!

Conning little old Ladies into giving up the Mineral Rights to their Land for a pittance. It was good training for Torturer in Chief.

A business associate of mine was approached by these guys, and he listened politely, but told them no sale.

Not because of any water issue, his well water is unusable...it is so contaminated with dissolved natural gas it bubbles.

He has both Marcellus and Utica shales under his acreage, and has over a mile frontage on a county road, and they want his ground BAD.

One memo said that they were going to make money on the bundling and re-selling of leases, not the gas.

an authenticated copy of this notebook well hidden someplace; this is the kind of hard evidence that corporations go to great lengths to "disappear" along with claims against them.