Geauga says it's ready when it comes..

EGL founders Mark Dolezal, Tom Henry and Curt Huffman

By Dan Shingler
4:30 am, July 19, 2013

Geauga County has not yet become a hot spot for shale drilling — but if it does, more than 500 landowners there are ready for it. They've all joined forces with a nonprofit known as the Eastern Geauga Landowners, which hopes to attract drillers by offering them ready-to-use tracts of land that are large enough to accommodate a shale gas well — normally about 640 acres. At the same time, the group hopes to protect and benefit its members by providing them a vehicle by which to share information on drilling activity, exploratory activities and, perhaps most importantly, offers made to lease mineral rights in the area.“More information is good for everybody,” reasons Mark Dolezal, one of the group's founders.

Mr. Dolezal, along with fellow property owners Curt Huffman and Tom Henry, founded Eastern Geauga Landowners in 2011. In 2012, the group was incorporated as a nonprofit.

The group's mission is to gather and share information, while also educating other area landowners about shale gas drilling and the demand and prices for mineral rights. While fracking is a contentious issue in the western part of the county, where “No Fracking” signs outnumber “Frack On” signs by a wide margin, the more rural eastern part of the county seems to support drilling. Since Eastern Geauga Landowners was formed, more than 500 landowners from three counties have joined; they boast a combined total of more than 40,000 acres in eastern Geauga, Ashtabula and Trumbull counties.

Eastern Geauga Landowners doesn't negotiate leases, provide legal services or otherwise take a cut from member's bonus or royalty payments. Instead, members simply pay $60 to join and then receive access to information shared within the group.

They also get what the group hopes will be additional bargaining power and higher prices by working in numbers, Mr. Dolezal said. And why not — it's cheaper for a driller to work directly with a large group of landowners than to send landmen across the county to gather them individually.

The group's members also get some marketing help. Member-owned land is displayed on maps at the group's Middlefield headquarters, allowing drillers or other interested parties to quickly get a picture of where and how much acreage is available.

Business, at least on the membership side, is brisk. New landowners show up every week, the three men say. As they spoke on a recent Saturday, a local Amish farmer came in and signed up as a member, putting his 100-acre farm among those listed as available to interested drillers.

So far, there have been no takers though, even as landowner groups to the south have been able to sign lucrative deals to lease their mineral rights. Indeed, Eastern Geauga Landowners concedes it hasn't yet received even an offer to lease its members' acreage.

The group is not worried, though, say its founders. Shale plays take time to develop, and their landowners are not desperate to sign deals right away. The thumper trucks continue to vibrate much of Geauga County in a continual evaluation of its geology and the pipelines that will be needed to carry away gas and oil aren't even built yet. It's better to get the right deal later than a bad deal today, they preach. Besides, they say, he who signs last often laughs loudest in the shale gas and oil business.

“The people in North Dakota who got $25,000 an acre (in the

Bakken shale play) were not the first people to sign leases,” Mr. Henry said.

Shale drilling will continue in Ohio, said Mr. Dolezal, adding that he's confident it will come to Geauga County as well.

“I'm not at all concerned,” he said recently about the prospect that the Utica might fizzle, or might not reach his area. “It will come, and we're not in any hurry.”

If and when it does come, drillers might be glad that the group formed. In some cases, Eastern Geauga Landowners members have enough land to offer entire townships for which drillers can lease mineral rights.

“We're hoping we can do at least one driller per township,” Mr. Henry said.