rights to frack about 30 acres of the Egypt Valley Wildlife Area in Belmont County and initiated the bidding process for additional fracking at Salt Fork State Park as well.
At Egypt Valley, Gulfport plans to access gas thousands of feet underground from a well pad roughly two miles outside the wildlife area. The Oklahoma City-based company is already active in eastern Ohio and owns stakes in operations on the gulf coast in Louisiana and the Alberta Oil Sands in Canada. An Oil and Gas Land Management Commission spokeswoman said she’d provide financial specifics on the bid by day’s end.
The commissioners also approved two other industry requests – state law shields the identity of the requesters – to open an additional 884 acres of Salt Fork in Guernsey County to oil and gas development. The votes trigger a competitive bidding process that occurs over the next few months. The near universal opposition is a sharp turn from the hundreds of pro-fracking form letters that pushed commissioners to allow drilling under the parks when they began their work in 2023. A Cleveland.