The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) leased nearly 3,000 acres of Ohio’s Wayne National Forest this week, generating over $11 million from out-of-state companies for future fracking operations. The auction, part of a quarterly oil and gas lease sale, involved 40 parcels totaling 2,776 acres across Monroe and Washington counties, located in Southeast Ohio.
According to a statement from the BLM, leasing represents “the first step in the process to develop federal oil and gas resources.” The agency noted that it ensures oil and gas development adheres to the requirements set forth by the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 and other applicable legal authorities. Oil and gas leases are awarded for a term of 10 years and continue as long as production of oil and gas occurs in paying quantities. The BLM had scoped out these specific parcels in January and announced the auction in July.
However, the lease sale has drawn criticism from environmental advocates. Nathan Johnson, senior attorney for the Ohio Environmental Council, stated that the sale violates important environmental laws intended to protect endangered wildlife and the quality of the environment. Johnson described the Wayne as Ohio’s only National Forest and one of the state’s best places for outdoor recreation, warning that fracking activities there will “pollute the air, harm local streams, and industrialize the landscape.” The Ohio Environmental Council is preparing to challenge the leasing in federal court, according to Johnson.
Concerns regarding fracking impacts extend to local communities. Residents in Washington County have raised concerns that injection wells, which manage brine waste, could potentially contaminate Marietta’s drinking water. Furthermore, the Yale School of Medicine indicates that increased exposure to fracking impacts health, particularly in children, including low birth weight, preterm births, congenital anomalies, and asthma.
Wayne National Forest, established in 1935, is Ohio’s only national forest, encompassing 244,000 acres across 12 counties. Its three units are located in Athens, Ironton, and Marietta in Southeast Ohio. The forest attracts more than 200,000 visitors annually, who come for its extensive hiking, biking, horseback riding, and off-road vehicle trails. The United States Forest Service reports that spending by visitors to the Wayne National Forest amounts to approximately $7.4 million each year. Managed by the U.S. Forest Service under the Department of Agriculture, a national forest blends conservation efforts with public service and resource extraction like logging and mining.
The forest already contains 1,200 conventional oil and gas wells. The BLM predicts that new wells drilled in the Wayne National Forest will primarily be horizontal, hydraulic fracturing natural-gas wells. Fracking is defined as the process of injecting liquid into the ground at a high pressure to extract oil or gas. Data from FracTracker Alliance, a nonprofit that collects information on fracking pipelines, reveals approximately 2,000 incidents associated with oil and gas wells in Ohio between 2015 and 2023. This includes 98 incidents specifically in Monroe County and 85 incidents in Washington County, where the newly leased parcels are located.
This marks the first lease sale in Wayne National Forest since March 2017, when 20 parcels in Monroe County were also auctioned off.
