The federal government took a major step on Friday toward opening over 2,800 acres of Ohio’s only national forest for oil and gas development.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced a September 15 lease sale for 41 parcels, totaling 2,840 acres, within the Wayne National Forest.
Despite remaining bureaucratic hurdles, this sale brings fracking to the forest for the first time – a political objective since 2016 – granting companies legal rights to the land and its subsurface minerals.
Wayne National Forest is unique, comprising three separate sections across southeast Ohio. The leases are situated near Marietta, Ohio, and Parkersburg, West Virginia.
The announcement Friday comes as 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.
