Drilling on state-owned land has been a topic of discussion recently, and now the federal government is cashing in on its piece of the shale gas play as well.  Oil and gas rights for more than 3,000 acres of the Wayne National Forest in Ohio will be placed on the auction block on December 7th.  Environmental groups are not the only groups protesting the lease– the nearby city of Athens and Athens County Commission have written a request that four of the parcels be removed from the auction.  Their letters express concerns about negative impacts to the tourism industry and that the leases do not protect the Hocking River and aquifer, which is downstream from the parcels and supplies 95% of the drinking water for several counties.

The forest sits over the Utica Shale formation, recently attracting a lot of attention in Ohio where it is estimated to contain 5.5 billion barrels of oil in addition to 15 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.  Read more here…

According to the University of Colorado Law School, the federal government owns most of the land suitable for oil and gas development in the United States (mostly in the West).  The process for developing these resources, such as the Wayne National Forest, involves the Forest Service identifying areas of national forest suitable for leasing, and then the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is responsible for managing the leasing process and development activities.  This system of leasing federal land was written in the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920, with several amendments being made since.  Recent amendments have been made in an attempt to reverse the trend of an exponentially growing number of protests– from only 1% of parcels protested in 1998, to 49% protested in 2009, which resulted in half of them being withdrawn from leasing.

Infrastructure, including stormwater systems, roads, bridges, water treatment plants, and locks and dams, is aging across the nation.   Federal and state programs are having trouble keeping up with necessary maintenance and modernization; regional agencies, such as the 10-county Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, are a sensible solution since ailing infrastructure often causes regional problems (ex. inadequate waste water treatment upstream causes drinking water treatment problems downstream).

With gas drilling activity putting additional strain on infrastructure, it only makes sense for some of the increased state revenue from natural gas production in the Marcellus Shale region to be put toward improvements in roads, water treatment, and other public projects.  Taxes and fees aside, Pennsylvania has been grappling with the question of how to handle royalty payments that are starting to roll in from leases on state parks and forests.  While the governor and others are eying the money for various projects, the U.S. Department of the Interior is scrutinizing whether any of the 175 gas wells on public lands in Pennsylvania are even legal. According to a 1964 federal conservation law, land purchased using money from the Land and Conservation Fund can not be converted to non-recreation use (i.e. a well pad) without prior approval by the National Park Service.  Such approval was never requested nor obtained.  Additionally, if such conversions were made, Pennsylvania would have to “buy land of at least equal value to compensate, and…use any revenue from leases or royalties…for conservation and recreation purposes only.” (Read the full article here…) The Conservation Fund lands issue also applies to West Virginia.

Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future, a statewide environmental group, is taking a different approach to protecting public lands: last week they launched a campaign asking natural gas companies to voluntarily pledge not to drill in the state’s parks.  Rather, they ask that the gas resources underlying public land be tapped into using horizontal drilling, with a 300-foot buffer around the park boundary.  The article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette mentions that the campaign is modeled after a West Virginia law prohibiting drilling in state parks, but it should be noted that the law was only enacted in 1961, and is not retroactive to mineral rights separated before that date.