Oil and Gas Industry in Eastern Ohio Weathers Pandemic

Times Reporter. On a recent Saturday in this small Harrison County community, a steady stream of big rigs passed through Deersville's main street, headed to a well site owned by Encino Energy on the east edge of town.The site, known as the Deersville HN FRA Unit, will consist of four horizontal wells, which will be extracting oil and natural gas from 95 separate tracts of land in Franklin, Stock and Nottingham townships, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.The drilling in the Deersville area is a sign that the oil and natural gas industry — which has been quiet in eastern Ohio for the past couple of years — hasn't gone anywhere."I think the future of the industry in Ohio is bright," said George Brown, executive director of the Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Program, a non-profit statewide education and public outreach program."I think what we're seeing now, coming through the pandemic, is a stabilization of the market of the industry in the state. The point I really try to make with folks is that the industry is still here. Oil and natural gas is still an important player in Ohio's economy."I understand it may have been a little quiet, and that's not necessarily a bad thing because producers have still been doing what they do every single day, and that is making the essential energy that helps us lead our everyday lives in Ohio."According to JobsOhio, the state's economic development agency, about 200,000 Ohioans are employed by the oil and gas industry."Direct employment is still very strong in Ohio," Brown said.The industry continues to be centered in Harrison, Belmont, Jefferson and Carroll counties and surrounding areas.From 2011 to the second quarter of 2020, oil and natural gas companies have invested an estimated $90.6 billion in Ohio and have paid out more than $7.2 billion in royalties to Ohio landowners.The COVID-19 pandemic, which drove down consumer demand for oil and resulted in a slump in commodity prices, proved to be a trying time for the industry.But it didn't cause a lull for Encino Energy operations in eastern Ohio."The global pandemic had an impact on the oil and gas industry, but our approach was a steady hand with steadfast development," said Jackie Stewart, director of external affairs for the company.In October 2018, Encino closed a $2 billion deal to buy Chesapeake Energy’s Utica Shale play assets in Ohio, acquiring about 900 operating and non-operating wells with about  900,000 acres of oil and gas leases. Encino is the second-largest producer of natural gas and oil in Ohio.Since that time, the company has had two rigs running in this part of the state, Stewart said."The pandemic had an impact on everyone," she said. "We knew that we had to do it better and be more efficient to be competitive."She credited Encino's success to a seasoned, experienced management team and the company's core values and culture."What you're seeing is the result – a sustainable, long-term approach to development of the Utica Shale play," Stewart said.Recently, the company was the recipient of the Excellence Award in the Large Business category from the Eastern Ohio Development Alliance. The alliance recognized Encino’s investment in and transparent communication with the communities in which Encino serves and operates.Brown said the oil and natural gas industry remains a good option for young people coming out of high school or college."I think there's still a very strong demand in the industry in the state," he said. "In fact, here at our organization, we just wrapped up three days of teacher workshops, where we give teachers from all over the state K-12 curriculum to take back to their students in their classrooms to engage with their students to talk about workforce opportunities."His organization also recently has given out $36,000 in scholarships to students pursuing a certification, two-year degree or four-year degree in the industry.Brown said Ohio continues to play a leading role in oil and natural gas production."I always like to emphasize in the state, we do it all when it comes to the natural gas and oil industry," he said. "We produce it, we extract it, we refine it to turn it into gasoline. We transport it through pipelines through the state. We convert it into energy. There are a number of natural gas plants that have come online or are under construction to come online."So Ohio oftentimes gets overlooked with Texas, Louisiana or Oklahoma in terms of production, but really we're the heart of it all and we do it all."Click here to view the original article.