Marietta Council Debates Oil and Gas Lease

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From The Marietta Times:
Members of Marietta City Council's lands, buildings and parks committee on Tuesday heard a presentation on the horizontal hydraulic fracturing (fracking) process that would be used to extract natural gas from Utica shale beds located more than a mile below the surface in the Marietta area.
The city administration requested the presentation from Matt Lupardus, vice president of the Southeastern Ohio Oil and Gas Association (SOOGA), Bob Chase, chairman of Marietta College's Petroleum Engineering Department, and Shawn Bennett with Energy In Depth, an oil and gas research, education and public outreach group.
Earlier this month the council members were approached by a local broker on behalf of Protege Energy III, a Tulsa, Okla.-based oil and gas company, about 35 acres of city property as part of a 6,000-acre block of surrounding lands that Protege wants to lease for a natural gas horizontal hydraulic drilling operation.
The company has offered to pay $4,750 an acre, plus a 17.5 percent royalty based on any product they would retrieve from the drilling operation.
But some council members have expressed concern that fracking could contaminate the city's well fields located along the Muskingum River near the Washington County Fairgrounds and Indian Acres Park.
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