Did you know there are 3,153 producing oil and gas wells in Tuscarawas County that provide natural gas for homes, industry, and some automobiles in the area? These wells yield annual landowner royalty of more than $6.5 million to area residents, and provide hundreds of jobs to area residents. Since 1953, most of these wells have been hydraulically fractured, using a mixture of 99.5 percent water plus sand. The remaining fracturing materials reduce friction as the water goes down the wellbore, and are typically used around your home. The average fracturing operation uses less than 12 other components, not 596, as the documentary Gasland erroneously purports.  

Scott Kell, former deputy chief of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, noted that more than 80,000 wells have been fractured in Ohio without a single instance of ground water contamination attributed to the fracturing process. 

The Ohio oil and gas industry is regulated by the Division of Mineral Resources Management (DMRM). In late 2010, DMRM volunteered to have the hydraulic fracturing portions of their program evaluated by STRONGER (State Review of Oil and Natural Gas Environmental Regulations Inc.), a nonprofit, multistate and multi-stakeholder group that reviews oil and natural-gas regulatory programs.

An eight-person team of legal, environmental, governmental and oil and gas regulatory representatives from outside Ohio and from within the state conducted a review of Ohio’s fracturing program and found that:

Ÿ The Ohio program is well-managed, professional and meets the STRONGER guidelines

Ÿ Ohio has strong enforcement tools.

To view the report, visit http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/Portals/11/oil/pdf/stronger_review11.pdf  

Visit http://www.energyindepth.org to learn more about hydraulic fracturing and discover the numerous fallacies contained in Gasland.

Sarah J. Tipka

New Philadelphia