Ohio national forest halts sale of drilling rights

http://www.ohio.com/news/ohiocentric/ohio-national-forest-halts-sale-of-drilling-rights-1.245753

COLUMBUS: The U.S. Forest Service has dropped plans to auction natural gas and oil drilling rights next month on thousands of acres in Ohio’s only national forest because administrators there want to study the possible impacts from the gas extraction method known as fracking, officials said Tuesday.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a horizontal drilling technique for gas that blasts chemical-laced water deep underground to break up shale and release natural gas locked in the rock. The Wayne National Forest in southeast Ohio will pull together a team of natural resources experts to analyze above-ground effects from the practice, forest Supervisor Anne Carey said.

In the meantime, more than 3,200 acres of forest land has been withdrawn from a federal oil and gas lease sale scheduled for Dec. 7, the Forest Service said. The acreage in Athens, Gallia, and Perry counties was to be included in a broader sale of leases for 20,949 acres of federal land in Ohio, Mississippi and Louisiana.

The study of fracking and the Wayne National Forest was being undertaken “based on new information and increased public interest on natural gas exploration, especially deep horizontal drilling,” Carey said. The review could take up to six months and lead to revisions in a 2006 environmental impact statement on proper use of the forest, which currently has nearly 1,300 mostly shallow oil and gas wells.

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