Oil: Boom in Ohio

Across the rolling farmlands of central Ohio’s Morrow County last week lumbered heavy trucks laden with pipe. In the county’s once-slumbering towns —Mt. Gilead, Cardington and Edison, roughly 40 miles north of Columbus-dusty station wagons from several states competed for parking spaces. Husky, plastic-helmeted men searched for scarce furnished rooms. The night sky glowed orange, and the air was filled with an acrid stench. “That smell used to make me deathly sick,” says one Morrow County resident, “but now it doesn’t bother me at all.” And why should it? It has become the smell of wealth, the sweet odor of Ohio’s first oil boom since the turn of the century.

Two Gushers. Ohio was a major oil producer 60 years ago, but its production had dwindled to nearly nothing until the Morrow County boom. It began modestly three years ago, when wildcatters drilled a 3,280-ft. well on a farm, but really got going last fall when two gushers came in almost at once. Last week alone, Ohio authorities issued 112 permits for drilling in Morrow County, bringing the number issued to nearly 1,000. In 450 attempts so far, oilmen have brought in 162 producing wells. Derricks have sprung up in clusters on front lawns, in narrow alleys and in vegetable gardens; one producing well occupies what was once home plate on the baseball field at the Edison Junior High School (the team will play all its games away this season). Says Theodore DeBrosse, veteran petroleum geologist for the state: “There is more drilling in this area than anywhere east of the Mississippi.”

So far, Morrow County people have made most of their gains from the boom by leasing their land for drilling. Oil speculators have wildly bid up prices; a three-month lease for a 61-acre tract near already-producing wells recently skyrocketed from $1 to $30,000 in a single day’s trading, and the value of another tract tripled from $25,000 to $75,000 in three days. Since the big oil production started only recently, royalty income—a standard 36.50 per barrel—is just beginning to build up. Nonetheless, the oil boom has stepped up the county’s economic activity: bank deposits have increased 20% in the past six months, service-station business has doubled, and restaurants have quadrupled their take.

Drilling Rights. No one has yet been able to determine the exact size of the Morrow County oil reservoir. So far, the 162 wells are producing 27,000 barrels daily of a good grade of petrochemical crude, for which Ashland Oil & Refining Co. and Pure Oil Co. pay $2.92 per barrel. Experienced oilmen feel, however, that the potential yield of the Morrow County field is being rapidly reduced by the drilling of too many wells in one small area, a practice that diminishes the subterranean gas pressure needed to force out the oil. But just in case the Morrow County field should turn out to be only the first tapping of a vast underground ocean of oil, more than 100 lease dealers are now quietly collecting contracts for drilling rights from Lake Erie to the Ohio River.