Feds advance plan to open 2,800 acres of Ohio's Wayne National Forest to fracking

FILE - A sign for the Wayne National Forest headquarters is seen in Nelsonville, Ohio, on Aug. 29, 2023. (AP Photo/Patrick Orsagos, File)

The federal government took a major step forward Friday toward opening more than 2,800 acres of Ohio’s only national forest to oil and gas development.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced a lease sale scheduled for Sept. 15 of 41 parcels of land in the Wayne National Forest totaling 2,840 acres.

Although some bureaucratic hurdles remain, a lease sale brings fracking the forest for the first time – the subject of political effort since at least 2016 – far closer to fruition, giving specific companies legal rights to the land and minerals beneath it.

Wayne is unique in that it’s not one contiguous plot of land but more like three separate swaths around southeast Ohio. The leases for sale sit near Marietta, Ohio, and Parkersburg, West Virginia.

The announcement Friday comes as GOP President Donald Trump’s administration has aggressively pursued opening public land to the energy industry. This includes shrinking national monuments in Utah, which would allow for oil and gas development, and reportedly pursuing the same in Alaska, all while rolling back rules around bond requirements, public comments and procedural timelines around those lease sales.

Meanwhile, the state of Ohio has opened about 22,000 acres of its state parks and wildlife areas to oil and gas companies as well since 2024, via recently passed GOP-backed legislation.

The September 2026 federal lease sale isn’t final – the winning bidder would still need a BLM permit to drill. However, this would likely be a rubber stamp, said Wendy Park, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, which has fought the leasing effort in court.

She said parallel litigation involving other previously leased lands in Wayne could invalidate the environmental analysis used to support the September 2026 lease sale, but there’s no telling what a judge might do.

She said fracking – an industrial process used to free natural gas from shale underground, technically known as hydraulic fracturing – threatens wildlife, including the Indiana bat, a designated endangered species. It means light and noise pollution and truck traffic into a recreational treasure.

“Is there no place left in Ohio that’s safe from fracking?” she said. “Almost every corner of Ohio, except the Wayne, has been fracked.”

Mike Chadsey, a spokesman for the Ohio Oil and Gas Association, said “unconventional” wells, which run far deeper and extend laterally to enable modern fracking techniques, would be new in the Wayne. However, the forest has hosted conventional oil wells (the traditional, shallower, vertical well style that predates modern fracking) since 1990.

He said the leasing process is “deliberate, transparent, and built on years of environmental review” and public input.

“Ohio has a long track record of producing oil and natural gas safely and responsibly, demonstrating that responsible energy development and environmental stewardship can go hand in hand,” he said. “Additionally, due to the Wayne’s patchwork of parcels, leasing federal minerals helps those landowner/mineral owners who are adjacent to the Wayne realize the full economic potential of their property.”

The government’s announcement triggers a 30-day public protest period to receive additional public input opened today and will close August 17, 2026. Members of the public can comment here.

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This story was originally published by Signal Ohio and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.