Memo raising questions in ‘fracking’ fray

[Rick Rowlands]

I am very skeptical of this.  Smells of a hoax. 

[irishbobcat]

YES, BEWARE of the Fracking Landman like Youngstown Shrimp, who will lie and deceive you into selling your land for fracking......

Shrimp is not be be trusted.......Do not trust his BS when he comes calling for your land.......

Memo raising questions in 'fracking' fray
Document calls for deception in pitches By  Julie Carr Smyth

Associated Press Monday August 8, 2011 7:33 AM

A memo that appears to coach buyers of oil- and gas-drilling leases to use deceptive tactics on landowners has provoked a state investigation and spirited debate in rural Ohio, the latest frontier in America's quest for new energy resources.

The tale of the found memo — unauthenticated but with language similar to that used by a seller familiar to Greene County residents — features aggressive marketers, zealous environmentalists and vulnerable residents.

So high are the stakes in the rush to lock up leases of fuel-rich Marcellus and Utica shale lands that Ohio's top law-enforcement official investigated the notebook, which one resident found near her driveway in April.

Was it really a playbook for a "landman," one of the door-to-door energy company representatives who've blanketed shale regions in the Northeast for months, coaxing landowners to lease in hopes that drillers strike it rich in their backyards?

Attorney General Mike DeWine could find no evidence that it belonged to Jim Bucher, a landman for West Bay Exploration Co., based in Traverse City, Mich., or that it was used to mislead residents. Yet his investigation also stopped short of identifying an alternative owner.

To promote a positive public image in the aftermath, Ohio's oil and gas industry has held training and intensified a public-relations effort. A local environmental leader wants the notebook fingerprinted.

After encounters with Bucher, Laura Skidmore found the memo inside a binder. She said she was stunned by its contents.

"I opened it up and thought, 'Oh, my God,' " she said.

The papers appear to instruct landmen in how to talk to residents: Don't mention groundwater contamination or lost property values, downplay natural-gas drilling (believed to be a greater environmental threat than oil drilling), and describe the hydraulic fracturing drilling process as " radioactive free," even though the memo concedes that is not accurate.

The vast stores of natural gas in the Marcellus shale have set off a feverish rush by drillers in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and Ohio is poised to join the fray. Permits allowing "fracking" in Ohio's portion of the Marcellus and the deeper Utica shale have risen from one in 2006, to four in 2009, to 32 so far this year, state records show.

The fracking process uses water mixed with chemicals and sand to fracture shale rock deep underground and free natural gas. Its promise of riches to landowners has been tempered with reports in Pennsylvania of environmental harm, contaminated private water wells and some waterways.

Not one drilling lease has been filed in Greene County, where the memo was found. That has fueled a theory that it was created by an environmentalist wanting to taint the industry and discourage drilling.

Officials of West Bay Exploration Co. — the only company seeking leases in Greene County at the time — insist the notebook did not belong to Bucher, a company veteran.

Beginning last fall, Bucher had been sending FedEx packets stuffed with lease documents to Skidmore's husband and her neighbors. He followed up with home visits and phone calls.

Many landowners, including Skidmore and T.J. Turner, who lives at the next crossroad, say they listened to Bucher cautiously.

Local environmental activists were busy sounding the alarm over what they saw as the hazards of drilling. The Green Environmental Coalition in Yellow Springs was holding informational meetings, and Josh Fox's anti-drilling documentary Gasland was showing in the local theater.

West Bay Vice President Pat Gibson said there was nothing unusual about Bucher's activities. An early analysis had shown new drilling potential in the area, he said, and the company wanted leases so it could drill test wells.

Skidmore and Turner said several points in the notebook were used by Bucher when he talked with them. One encouraged pitching leases to men who "are more likely to sign than women." Another stressed emphasizing the search for oil.

Skidmore and Turner took the notebook to Victoria Hennessy, president of the environmental coalition.

Hennessy scanned the memo and posted it on the coalition's website. She called the media, notified lawmakers. It went viral.

At the Ohio Oil and Gas Association, executive vice president Tom Stewart is convinced that the memo is a hoax — appearing just as the Republican-led legislature and Republican Gov. John Kasich are poised to enact a law allowing drilling on all Ohio state lands.