By Spencer Hunt

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

When a natural-gas company offered Stanley Miller $8 an acre for the right to drill on his Carroll County cattle farm a decade ago, he jumped at the deal.

"They paid us enough to cover our property taxes every year," Miller said of the mineral-rights lease he signed with Tri-Star Energy Co.

It might be time to renegotiate. The promise of a largely untapped, potentially rich reserve of oil and natural gas deep underground has created a land rush in eastern Ohio, with tales of offers by energy companies of $1,000 to $1,500 per acre for the right to drill.

"It's pure speculation," said Craig Brown, the Columbiana County recorder. The region's previous oil-and-gas boom, along the Marcellus shale formation, promised billions of dollars for drillers in upstate New York, West Virginia and parts of Pennsylvania, but little for Ohio. But geologists say the Utica shale formation, a layer of thick black rock that lies 8,000 feet beneath most of the state, might hold enormous oil and natural-gas reserves. This promise has oil-and-gas companies spending a lot of money to snap up mineral rights to land.

As many as 40 energy-company representatives file into Brown's office every day, he said, combing through property records and filing new leases. Energy companies have filed 600 new mineral-rights leases in Columbiana County this year. They filed 197 new leases in the same period last year.

The Jefferson County recorder's office reported 417 new leases since May. In the first four months of the year, there were 52. Harrison County Recorder Tracy Boyer said her office has been "absolutely packed" with energy-company reps since April. "It's so full in here people are sitting on the floor," she said. "We've got people in here from Canada, Oklahoma, Texas, Pennsylvania and West Virginia."

The activity springs from a new horizontal drilling technique that helps draw gas from once-unimaginable depths. It also has drawn fire from environmental groups and fears of polluted groundwater. The drilling technique, called hydro-fracturing, uses large amounts of water laced with
chemicals to "crack" the shale. The state of New York and Pittsburgh officials have halted drilling, and West Virginia officials are debating tougher restrictions. Pennsylvania landowners got as much as $6,000 an acre for mineral rights for Marcellus drilling, said Tom Tugend, deputy chief of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, which regulates mining and drilling companies.

There's been so much interest in the Marcellus shale that it's drawn business away from Ohio. The Natural Resources Department reported this week that the number of oil and gas wells drilled in Ohio in 2009 - 558 - was a 48 percent drop from 2008. The state blames low natural-gas prices and
demand for more drilling rigs in Pennsylvania. Now it's Ohio's turn.

In September, Anschutz Exploration Corp. of Colorado secured the mineral rights at Donna Rector's family dairy farm near Carrollton in Carroll County. "I was in amazement," Rector said. "They just came to our door." She won't say how much Anschutz paid her family; she doesn't want her neighbors to know. Anschutz officials didn't return calls seeking comment. On Nov. 3, Texas-based Chesapeake Energy reported that it bought 500,000 acres of Marcellus and Utica shale mineral rights in Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York from Anschutz for $850 million. That's about $1,700 per acre. Chesapeake officials declined to comment.

As the land rush continues, environmental groups, including the Northeast Ohio Gas Accountability Project, want property owners to consult lawyers and add protective measures to the leases. The group said companies need to test groundwater for pollution before and after drilling. "You need to know what's in your water today and how that might change if drilling takes place," said Kari Matsko, the project's director.