http://www.silive.com/newsflash/index.ssf/story/mysterious-notebook-fuels-ohio-drilling-feud/79cb7cc7a8424fc5a41e2942a5889771Mysterious notebook fuels Ohio drilling feud
Aug. 6, 2011, 8:54 p.m. EDT
Associated Press
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A memo that appears to coach buyers of oil and gas drilling leases to use deceptive tactics on unsuspecting landowners has provoked a state investigation and spirited debate in rural Ohio, the latest frontier in America's quest for new energy resources.
The tale of the found memo — unauthenticated but with language similar to that used by a seller familiar to Greene County residents — features aggressive marketers, zealous environmentalists, and vulnerable residents.
So high are the stakes in the rush to lock up leases of fuel-rich Marcellus and Utica shale lands that Ohio's top law enforcement official investigated the notebook one resident found near her driveway in April. Was it really a playbook for a "landman," one of the door-to-door energy company representatives who've blanketed shale regions in the Northeast for months, coaxing landowners to lease in hopes that drillers strike it rich in their backyards?
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The papers appear to instruct landmen in how to talk to residents they visit: don't mention groundwater contamination or lost property values; downplay natural gas drilling (believed to be a greater environmental threat than oil drilling); and describe the hydraulic fracturing drilling process as "radioactive free," even though the memo concedes that is not accurate.
Much more at link.