Carrie Blackmore Smith

csmith@enquirer.com

Four bidders paid roughly $1.7 million to lease portions of Wayne National Forest, Ohio's only national forest, in the first auction for oil and gas rights in the forest's history.

Eclipse Resources, an oil and gas company based in State College, Pennsylvania, bought the bulk of the acreage for a little more than $1 million. Eclipse outbid all others for the right to explore hydraulic fracturing opportunities on 11 parcels totaling nearly 426 acres.

Flat Rock Logistics, based in Morgantown, West Virginia, bought two parcels totaling 151 acres for $551,152.

Gulfport Energy Corp., based in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, bought two parcels totaling about 98 acres for $232,370.

Finally, Petrogas Co., headquartered in Houston, bought two small parcels totaling a little more than 3 acres for $2,705.

In all, there were 22 bidders involved in the auction held Tuesday, which also included one property in Arkansas and one in Mississippi.

Leasing proceeds will go to the Federal Treasury. The leases only allow exploration of potential oil and gas wells. In order to start an operation, the companies will need to go through the proper channels of securing a permit.

"After a well begins to produce in the future, a percentage of the royalties will be returned to the state of Ohio," said Davida Carnahan, a spokesperson for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

Earlier story from Dec. 13: Roughly 719 acres of Wayne National Forest, the only national forest in Ohio, went up for lease Tuesday.

The properties, which represent less than 0.3 percent of the forest, can be leased by companies that do hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to tap underground natural gas.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) listed 17 parcels for lease. Up until Monday, it had advertised auctioning off the leasing rights for about twice as much land, according to Davida Carnahan, a spokesperson for the bureau, which is managing the leasing for the U.S. Forest Service.

On Tuesday morning, the bureau released information that it had withdrawn 16 parcels, another 881 acres, in order to "resolve questions of ownership and existing rights for minerals."

Once questions are resolved, the federal government could again decide to offer the properties for lease, according to the document.

Environmental groups have challenged the leasing of the public lands. Some pledged to continue the fight Tuesday.

"This is Ohio's only national forest," Ohio Environmental Council Executive Director Heather Taylor-Miesle said in a prepared statement. "We need to do all we can to protect it."

The auction had closed on most properties by noon, Carnahan said.

There is already conventional drilling happening within the footprint of the forest on private lands.

However, fracking opponents say it has the potential to pollute water and air, threatening public health and could harm local ecosystems. The Bureau of Land Management's environmental assessment determined these actions would have no significant impact on the environment.

Wayne National Forest is a patchwork of properties, covering more than 250,000 acres of Appalachian foothills. Much of the land borders private property. The public swaths of the forest are located near Athens, Ironton and Marietta, roughly 3½ hours east of Cincinnati,

The properties included in the auction are only in the most easterly parts of the government-owned lands.

The forest contains about 300 miles of trails, used by people to hike, hunt, fish and ride horses. Many plants and animals live in the forest, including gray fox and woodchuck.

Discussions around allowing fracking to occur in the forest began in 2006, when a land and management plan was developed.

Leasing only allows exploration at this time. Permits to drill would still be required before any lessee started a fracking operation.

Across the United States, BLM is responsible for oil and gas leasing on about 564 million acres – an area equivalent to 1,880 versions of New York City.