Debate over oil and gas well drilling has

, but 2011 might end up being recalled as the year when it finally erupted.

For starters, geologists, energy experts and gas well drillers fully believe Ohio might be sitting atop a gold mine of natural gas embedded in the long-known, but only recently accessible shale deposit.

They also are hopeful that those riches will soon be more available now that Ohio Gov. John Kasich favors and the legislature is considering allowing drilling companies on state park land to reach those deposits.

Ohio's new governor proposed leasing park land in his biennial budget and both the Ohio House and Senate have bills in the hopper that could authorize the state Department of Natural Resources to do so.

But some environmentalists are fearful that the controversial hydrofracturing extraction method crucial for successfully tapping that Utica shale deposit might damage not only park lands, but also the environment in general.

Meanwhile, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources is busy preparing for the expected wave of new drilling on the state's eastern end and for the likelihood that parks might be a part of that boom.

The confluence of all these movements over the next six months promises to put Ohio front and center in a debate about the cost and value of natural gas and oil drilling in the United States, particularly by the method more commonly known as fracking.

Fracking, although in use by drillers for decades, is being used more recently in a process of horizontal drilling, where large volumes of brine -- and petroleum distillates -- are injected into the shale to fracture the rock, forcing it to give up its gas and oil deposits.

The drilling and fracking questions are particularly acute in Ohio right now because of the state's financial woes and the promise that leasing of land for drilling could net untold millions of dollars, some of which could help cover a $500 million backlog in maintenance and repairs in the parks themselves.

What lies beneath Ohio's eastern edge

The oil and gas deposits drawing attention in Ohio are known as the Utica Shale, a rock formation located from 3,000 to 7,000 feet below the Marcellus Shale, itself several thousand feet below the surface.

While the formation has yet to be thoroughly evaluated, some experts say, it's potential is thought to be extensive under portions of Ohio and Pennsylvania, and several other states.

Pennsylvania, the state with the richest gas fields in the Marcellus deposit, collected $128 million last year by leasing drilling rights in its forests and recently allowed drilling in its parks, as well. Another nearby state, Michigan, has $178 million in a trust fund just from fees collected from drillers, although they are only allowed in state forests, not parks.

The vast reserves in the Utica formation could also translate into millions of dollars in sales and thousands of jobs, Lawrence Wickstrom, chief of the Ohio Geological Survey, told the Ohio Oil and Gas Association earlier this month.

Wickstrom told the group that it was his educated guess that potentially trillions of cubic feet of gas and billions of barrels of oil are buried deep under Ohio's surface.

An industry expert agreed, with some reservation.

"The technology available to us now has created a whole new oil field," said Tom Stewart of the 1,500-member Ohio Oil and Gas Association. "But it's also in its absolute infancy. We'll drill some wells and see what happens, though some pretty big players are already of the belief that it's something big."

Large oil and energy companies like Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell and most recently Chevron, are investing in oil and gas exploration and drilling in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio, Stewart said.

What the governor, legislature could do

Earlier this month, Rep. John Adams, a Republican from Sidney, introduced a bill that would create a five-member panel appointed by the governor to open up to the highest bidder all the parks for oil and gas exploration. A similar bill was introduced in the Senate.

Ohio parks with potential for gas drilling

Map by Felesia Jackson.

View Ohio state parks with potential for gas drilling in a larger map

The members of the panel, to be appointed by Kasich, would include two industry representatives, a representative from an environmental group and two public officials.

Kasich referred to the oil and gas deposits in his March 8 state of the state speech, saying that drilling in the Utica and Marcellus shale formations "could transform Ohio."

"I don't want to be saying it's going to happen, because we've not had enough testing to this point," he said. "But I'll tell you, the people who are the smart business people are investing like you cannot believe."

Ohio already allows limited drilling. There are 167 active gas wells in more than a dozen state forests or nurseries, a state official said. Those wells, however, are generally "straight down" wells that go through the Utica layer and into sandstone far beneath the surface.

Allowing drilling in state parks would open up another 200,000 acres for possible gas and oil exploration -- most of which would require fracking to reach the deposits.

Drillers have been eyeing Salt Fork State Park for years, for example, said Tom Tugend of the state Division of Mineral Resources Management.

"That's the one they always ask about," he said. "It's a large tract of land, they've drilled around it for years and the geology says there should be Utica shale beneath it. That could lead to historic reserves and historic production."

Hydrofracturing is still being investigated by the U.S. EPA to see whether fracking fluid leaks could endanger drinking water or have other environmental impact.

It has been the subject of the Academy Award nominated documentary Gasland and scathing news reports by ProPublica and more recently by The New York Times.

The industry has also lashed back, criticizing especially the Gasland movie.

What environmentalists fear

Those are the things that worry environmental groups -- the makeup of the proposed oversight board and fracking in state parks.

They objected in December when Kasich said he supported drilling in parks and then appointed as head of the his Department of Natural Resources David Mustine, a former senior vice president at American Electric Power Corp. Now they're vowing to fight.

"Certain places should be sacred, places reserved for nature, for families to enjoy our natural resources," said Ron Prosek of the Northeast Ohio Gas Accountability Project.

The group until now had mostly been focused on protecting residential neighborhoods from the incursion of gas wells over the last few years after the state took away local authority to control drilling in their towns.

"I think the energy is building in the environmental community among hunters, fisherman, the Buckeye Forest Council, Sierra Club and lots of others over this," Prosek said. "The proposed legislation has galvanized groups that had different focuses until now."

The governor, however, said state officials from the EPA and Mustine have already "put together a program that will ensure environmental security" and that will make certain that "both land holders and the lease holders are treated fairly."

What the ODNR does to regulate drilling

Natural resources officials are now scrambling to prepare rules and regulations for natural gas drillers to tap into state parks on Ohio's eastern end, probably within the next six months.

"This isn't going to happen overnight and we're well positioned already to make sure we have stringent rules and regulations to protect Ohio," said Laura Jones, a spokeswoman for the Department of Natural Resources. "We will look to other states, to see what issues they have had and improve where we need to.

The state's Tugend said details of the regulations for drilling in parks are not set.

"But in one sense, drilling is drilling -- whether it's in a park or elsewhere," he said. "What matters is that any landowner, in this case the state, can have their own requirements on a driller right in the lease."

Stewart doesn't expect to see a mad scramble among his oil and gas association members to tap state park lands -- nor that drilling rigs will suddenly show up in Ohio's beloved places.

"The stringent regulations that the state is likely to come up with make a lot of members step back and think twice about getting involved," he said. "Are we going to see a drilling rig set up in Old Man's Cave in Hocking Hills State Park?

"Of course not, that would be absurd, but there may be some areas that you could directionally access and gain the resources without affecting the park view."

VIDEO: An industry video (from Canadian company Questare) that shows how horizontal drilling and fracking works.