Drilling rigs dot Ohio countryside

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(Gallery by Joshua Gunter, The Plain Dealer)

Chesapeake Energy Corp. is trying to sell some of its drilling leases in Stark and Portage counties where the shale 6,000 feet below the surface has been said to be rich in oil.

The Oklahoma City company has listed for sale its drilling rights to more than 94,000 acres in the two counties, including three completed wells, two of which are producing. The company has the lease rights to about 1.3 million acres in Ohio.

The for-sale offering appears on the website of Meagher Energy Advisors of Denver, a kind of national real estate agency used by the oil and gas industry.

Chesapeake had no comment Tuesday on the listing, which was the company's second Ohio lease sale offering in less than a year.

But during an April 1 conference call to announce new leadership for the company after the departure of company founder Aubrey McClendon in March, acting Chief Executive Officer Steve Dixon said Chesapeake wanted to raise between $4 billion and $7 billion this year by selling assets such as drilling leases.

Dixon said the company had already raised $1.5 billion through the sale of small amounts of leased acreage in the states where it operates.

McClendon's policy of spending heavily to lease more and more land worked well for the company until natural gas prices fell because supplies exceeded demand -- and Chesapeake found itself with up to a $20 billion shortfall last year.

Chesapeake and other shale-focused companies last year moved away from gas-rich shale, such as the Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania after wholesale natural gas prices plummeted to a 10-year low. At just over $4 per 1,000 cubic feet, natural gas prices are still too low for most companies drilling horizontal wells to quickly recover their costs, say analysts.

Oil prices have remained near $100 per barrel, meaning an oil well's production can more quickly pay the $6 million to $10 million drilling and hydraulic fracturing costs than a natural gas well can.

The Portage and Stark acreage is right in the middle of the hypothetical "oil window" in Ohio's Utica Shale, meaning initial analysis of the geology in the two counties indicated the rock probably contains more oil that natural gas.

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources has granted Chesapeake six permits to drill in Portage County, but the company has drilled only two, according to state records. Chesapeake has 10 drilling permits in Stark County and has drilled four wells.

Chesapeake has concentrated on drilling wells in Carroll County, where it has about 225 permits and has drilled more than 80 wells.

The state expects to release oil and gas production figures for companies working Ohio gas and oil wells later this week or next week.

About 10 months ago, Chesapeake used Meagher Advisors to list leases scattered over 337,481 acres in 19 counties, including parcels in nine Northeast Ohio counties from Ashtabula to Ashland and Portage counties. There were also leases listed for sale in Southeast Ohio.

At that time Chesapeake spokesman Jim Gipson told The Oklahoman, the regional newspaper based in Oklahoma City, that the listing was . . . "part of our previously announced plans. We will focus our development on those counties in Ohio where our land ownership is more concentrated than the land ownership in the counties being offered for sale."

Meagher Advisors has not has not listed Cheaspeake's 2012 lease offerings as sold.

UBS Investment advisors this week said Chesapeake's goal of raising another $5.5 billion from sales on top of the $1.5 billion already raised will be difficult and could have a negative impact on the company's production goals.

"While Chesapeake is targeting another $2.5 to $5.5 billion in 2013 asset sales, we believe this will be a challenge to hit without impacting production guidance given the emerging buyers' market for undeveloped acreage," the company wrote in a note to clients.

A previous version of this article misstated the cost of drilling and fracturing a horizontal well.