This article seems to confirm the Utica Oil Shale as Chesapeake's mystery play (1 million acres).

The Wall Street Journal 

WINDHAM, Ohio—An oil-rich underground layer of rock, called the Utica Shale, has sparked a leasing frenzy and the prospect of a new flow of cash and jobs to a development-starved corner of the Rust Belt.

Chesapeake Energy Corp. and other oil companies have swarmed this northeast Ohio hamlet and others nearby, buying mineral-rights leases to drill into what the company and some analysts say might be one of the U.S.'s last big unconventional oil fields yet to be developed on a commercial scale. Chesapeake said it has spent about $1 billion acquiring mineral rights on more than a million acres from public and private landowners.

"It was a mad rush," said Rob Donham, mayor of Windham, which eventually sold Chesapeake the right to drill underneath 100 acres of land—below the town's municipal buildings and ball fields—for $55,000 and possibly decades of royalties for oil and natural gas.

While many here have embraced the possibility of oil development, some local leaders are worried about safety and harm to the environment. "This is a risk I'm unwilling to take," said Albert Leno II, a trustee of Plain Township, about 50 miles south of Windham. Plain's board of trustees has asked the state for a moratorium on drilling, pending further study. Ohio so far hasn't enacted any legislation to slow drilling.

Some environmental scientists contend the shale drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, risks contaminating groundwater.

The industry says the process—which involves using chemicals, water and sand to crack open shale to release its oil and gas—is safe.

The Utica deposit lies below sections of eight states, from Tennessee to New York, as well as parts of Canada. But drilling companies believe eastern Ohio has the most concentrated oil reserves that are the easiest to extract. The companies are in the testing and exploratory stage now.

Hydraulic fracturing processes have been used to recover oil and gas from rock formations for decades through traditional vertical drills.

Hydraulic fracturing combined with horizontal drilling techniques has allowed producers to retrieve vast quantities of natural gas from shale formations. The techniques were more recently adapted to coax crude oil from deeply buried rocks in states including Texas, North Dakota and now, potentially, Ohio.

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.Energy development "could be a godsend" to the hard-scrabble region, Republican Gov. John Kasich said in a statement. But he warned against getting "carried away until we know more about what exactly Ohio has buried thousands of feet below it."

Mr. Kasich, who took office in January, appointed a former oil-field-services executive, David Mustine, to head Ohio's natural-resources department. Among that agency's tasks is to study whether there is a way to make drilling legal in state parks—a proposal that has riled environmental groups.

With a statewide unemployment rate of 9.6% and a state budget deficit projected at $8 billion over the next two years, "everything is on the table," he said.

Ohio's oil and gas business predates the Civil War, but it has been decades since the state was a major producer.

It may be too early to call Utica the last big shale-oil deposit, in part because its productivity hasn't been proven, said Pete Stark, with energy consultancy IHS. But the Utica's size, geology and organic content make it "a promising play," he said.

In Ohio, state geologists are working on an estimate of the Utica formation's reserves but haven't completed it. If energy companies have their own estimates, they aren't disclosing them.

Ohio doesn't track leasing data, but county courthouses have seen a surge in lease filings.

In Portage County, home to Windham, dozens of researchers on Chesapeake's payroll have crowded the recorder's office since September, poring over land records. Normally, Portage County records about 20 mineral leases a year; in 2010 there were 1,226.

Local oil and gas attorney Eric Johnson says some of his clients have already reaped life-altering rewards from the leases. One farmer in Ohio's poverty stricken Appalachian region pocketed nearly $1 million for selling drilling rights to his land, Mr. Johnson said. If the play pans out, even more money could pour into Ohio via royalties, typically 12.5% per barrel of oil.

Last fall, Chesapeake's leasing agents popped up in Navarre, a town of 1,800 people, where the last signs of urban northeast Ohio fade into Amish farmland. Agents offered enough money to run the police department for six months, in exchange for drilling rights beneath a park and cemetery.

"I'd hate to miss the boat," said Mayor Bob Benson, whose administration has not agreed to a lease, "but you worry about the future."

In Windham, a town of about 3,000, where the crumbling library was recently condemned and the largest employer is a brick maker with a payroll of about 150, the mayor said residents badly needed the oil company windfall.

"A lot of this land has been owned by families for 150 years and they've been scraping by," Mr. Donham said. "This has the potential to really transform the area for the next generation."

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