BLM preparing to auction oil and gas leases in Wayne forest

The federal Bureau of Land Management is ready to auction more than 3,000 acres of the Wayne National Forest for oil and gas leases, as part of a larger three-state auction involving a total of almost 21,000 acres in Ohio, Louisiana and Mississippi.

According to a notice dated Sept. 7, the BLM is offering 45 parcels of national forest land 886 acres in Louisiana's Kisatchie National Forest, 16,761 in Mississippi's Homochitto National Forest, and 3,302 acres in the Wayne for oil and gas leasing. Of the Ohio acreage, most about 2,623 acres is located in northern Athens County.

The auction has been scheduled for Dec. 7 at BLM's Eastern States Office in Springfield, Va., according to the notice.

There appear to be five parcels in the Wayne in Ohio slated for auction one each in Perry and Gallia counties, and three in Athens County. Most of the Ohio acreage a total of about 3,302 acres set for auction is in Athens County.

The BLM documents show the Perry County parcel to be about 528 acres, and the Gallia County parcel to be about 151 acres. The three Athens County parcels, all in York Township near the Minker's Run area, are about 265 acres, 1,238 acres, and 1,120 acres.

The Athens NEWS learned of the pending auction only Friday evening, and so has been unable to contact anyone at the Wayne or the BLM for comment.

Athens resident Heather Cantino, who is on the board of the environmental group Buckeye Forest Council, said in an email message that the group is deeply concerned about risks to water supplies if the horizontal fracturing ("fracking") method is used to drill for oil and gas in the Wayne.

"Considering that the Athens drinking water supply is adjacent to and recharged by the Hocking River this is extremely alarming," Cantino wrote. She said the "many hundreds of chemicals injected into wells for horizontal fracturing are highly toxic and are used at levels of tens of thousands of gallons per well."

Cantino also expressed concerns about Ohio regulations that she said allow waste to be stored in open pits and re-injected, and the toxic sludge buried on site.

Defenders of the fracking method say that it has been used safely for decades, and that critics exaggerate the dangers to water supplies. There's also some question as to whether the oil and gas reserves underlying Athens County can be cost-effectively developed in the same quantities as the reserves farther north in Eastern Ohio.

Any lease granted under the auction would be subject to standard oil-and-gas lease stipulations of the U.S. Forest Service, according to the BLM documents.

According to Buckeye Forest Council staff attorney Nathan G. Johnson, Friday is the deadline for anyone opposed to the auction to file a formal protest letter with BLM. Cantino said she learned about the auction only Friday, and is "shocked" that the Wayne had not widely publicized the auction earlier.

Johnson alleged via email Sunday that in his view, the pending auction is illegal. "The BLM and Forest service will violate federal law if they lease these parcels of the Wayne National Forest for oil and gas development, because neither agency has considered the potential environmental impacts that high-volume horizontal fracking could have on the forest," the attorney wrote. "Federal law requires BLM and Forest Service to withdraw these leases from sale until they consider the potential harm to wildlife, habit, water quality, and other critical resources."

Johnson added that the parcels in question sit atop the Utica shale bed, an underground formation suspected to contain large quantities of oil and/or natural gas. The prospect of extracting these resources with the horizontal fracking method is driving something of a leasing boom in Ohio.