One energy company has said it thinks that the oil and natural gas in the shale deposits in eastern Ohio could be worth more than 20 billion dollars.
Chesapeake Energy’s CEO Aubrey McClendon was at the Governor’s summit on energy and the economy in Columbus yesterday, and discussed the controversial process of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking”, in which water, sand and chemicals are pumped into wells at high pressure so the rocks will release the gas and oil inside. McClendon says since the first well was fracked in Ohio in 1954, it’s been done safely 80-thousand times.
He says, "I encourage people to go find 80 thousand events of some environmental catastrophe that's being talked about. So, most of that opposition comes from people who believe in something that's not realistic. Still believe in it, but it's not realistic which is that wind and solar can provide all of our energy, and it's just not reasonable, not possible."
McClendon says his company has spent 2 billion dollars on land leases in eastern Ohio, and has been paying as much as 5 thousand dollars an acre. Chesapeake Energy has five drilling rigs in Ohio right now, and expects to have as many as 40 in the next three years.