Current drilling activity in Ohio

Sedimentary rocks representing all of the Paleozoic systems underlie Ohio. Since the early 1900s, the Ohio oil and gas industry has been based primarily upon the persistent development of Clinton and Berea fields of E. Ohio. There have been a few exceptions to this trend. The most significant of these was the central Ohio boom from 1961 to 1965. A wildcat venture drilled in Morrow County resulted in a major discovery in the Cambroordovician Trempealeau dolomite. The well was completed in porous dolomite just below the Knox unconformity and produced 400 bopd. The discovery well set off a drilling spree in central Ohio during which Cambrian wells were drilled in 37 other counties. With rare exception, production outside the original Morrow County field has been small. Since 1860, oil or gas has been discovered in 69 of Ohio's 88 counties. More than 200,000 wells have been drilled and ca. 43,000 are still active. Production has been obtained from 33 different formations at depths ranging from 50 ft to 8500 ft. Ohio has produced more than 870 million bbl of oil and in excess of 4.6 billion mcf of natural gas. A total of 5172 well completions were processed by themore » Ohio Division of Geological Survey in 1981, establishing a modern day drilling record.« less