Anti-fracking advocates in Athens County now have to fight against natural-gas interests from outside not only the state but also the country.
The French oil group Total SA bought a 25 percent stake in a joint venture with Chesapeake Energy Corp. that covers the Utica Shale area of eastern Ohio. The stake is reportedly worth $2.3 billion, Reuters reports.
The deal covers about 619,000 acres throughout eastern Ohio, according to a Total news release. Total expects production in its stake “to reach 100,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day by the end of the decade,” according to the release.
A news release from Chesapeake stated that “the joint venture area covers all or a portion of 10 counties in eastern Ohio.”
“Total is delighted to be building on our technical successes with Chesapeake … and to expand in the liquids-rich Utica Shale play in Ohio,” Yves-Louis Darricarrère, the president of Total Exploration and Production, said in the release.
The deal will directly impact Chesapeake’s shale gas extraction in the region, and some of the money will inevitably be used for hydraulic fracturing, "or fracking."
Fracking has been heralded as one of the principal ways the United States can exploit natural-gas reserves that were unattainable before the practice came into use. However, serious concerns have been raised in Athens County and throughout the U.S. as to the economic and health effects of fracking, including the number of jobs the practice actually creates and its effects on drinking water.
This is not the first investment by a foreign group in shale gas drilling in America, but it is one of the first investments in shale gas drilling in Ohio by a foreign group, Reuters reports.
Total, which is based in Paris, is “the fifth-largest, publicly traded, integrated international oil and gas company in the world” and is looking to expand its investments in shale gas production in Europe and the Americas, according to its release.
