Summary: While the number of individual fracking jobs in Ohio was highest around 2015, the size of individual fracking jobs has continued to increase. In 2023, a typical job in Ohio used 22,800,000 gallons of water. Recently, operators report about 200 FracFocus disclosures per year.
On this page we provide summaries of data, links to resources and a collection of Open-FF articles focused on Ohio. Click here for a different state or the Open-FF’s home page. At the bottom of this page is background on the Open-FF Project.
Quick Stats from FracFocus for 2023
- Number of wells fracked: 205 in 9 counties
- Typical water use: 22,800,000 gallons
- Typical sand use: 20,000,000 pounds
- Typical added chemicals: 73,700 pounds
- Maximum added chemicals: 4,180,000 pounds
- Number of trade secret claims: 1,063 with a total mass of 8,410,000 pounds
- Most active operating companies: Ascent Resources – Utica, LLC; EAP Ohio LLC; Gulfport Energy Corporation; Hilcorp Energy Company; Southwestern Energy
Stats details
| Median | Max | Total all wells | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Water Use (gallons) | 22,800,000 | 53,600,000 | 4,980,000,000 |
| Sand Use (pounds) | 20,000,000 | 173,000,000 | 4,360,000,000 |
| Chemical additives (pounds) | 73,700 | 4,180,000 | 28,500,000 |
| Trade Secret records (pounds) | 20,800 | 200,000 | 8,410,000 |
Notes:
– These 2023 statistics are calculated from a Sept 12, 2024 download from FracFocus.
– Water use (in gallons) is disclosed as TotalBaseWaterVolume.
– Sand use is the quantity of the material, “Quartz (SiO2)” CASRN: 14808-60-7. Other proppants are sometimes used instead of this material.
– Chemical additives includes all records (except water and sand) that Open-FF has been able to resolve to an authoritative CASRN identity.
– Masses are calculated and/or directly disclosed for most chemicals. For these stats, when not enough information is available to provide a mass in a record, we set the value to zero.
– Trade Secrets (also known as Confidential Business Information or Proprietary) are those records that have been explicitly marked by the companies by one of those names. Even though the material’s identity is hidden, quantity data is usually still included.
To visit a county summary, either follow the links when you click on the map or click here for a county table.
Ohio articles
FracFocus Trade Secrets in Ohio
Open-FF found 2,653 Ohio wells with trade secret records. Broad patterns and examples are illustrated.
Ohio: chemical quantity omissions
Open-FF found 594 Ohio wells with records that do not report quantity data.
PDC Energy: Omissions of quantity data
PDC Energy omitted quantity data in 176 FracFocus disclosures. We summarize the omissions in this…
XTO Energy/ExxonMobil: Omissions of quantity data
XTO Energy/ExxonMobil omitted quantity data in 989 FracFocus disclosures. We summarize the omissions in this…
Chesapeake Operating: Omissions of quantity data
Chesapeake Operating, Inc. omitted quantity data in 2143 FracFocus disclosures. We summarize the omissions in…
Water source summary added to state pages
State-focused pages now include a summary chart of the optional water source data
Ohio: errors by duplication
Open-FF found 1,048 Ohio wells with chemical disclosures that contained duplicate records. These errors distorted…
CONSOL Energy Inc.: errors by duplication
Open-FF found 77 disclosures published by CONSOL Energy Inc. that contained duplicate records. These errors…
Chesapeake Operating, Inc: errors by duplication
Open-FF found 91 disclosures published by Chesapeake Operating, Inc. that contained duplicate records. These errors…
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Ohio: all years of FracFocus
Monthly number of disclosures
Typical water use
Recent water sources
Please note that an Open-FF analysis of FracFocus water source data in Dec. 2024 found several concerning sources of inconsistencies and errors.
Operating companies
Click Here for more about Operators in Ohio.
Trade Secrets
Background
What is FracFocus? What is Open-FF?
FracFocus serves as the collector and manager of fracking chemical disclosures of the oil and gas industry. It delivers published disclosures to state regulators and it operates a website to help the public see those disclosures and offers a bulk download of the disclosure data. While it started in 2011 as an experiment, disclosing to FracFocus is now required by many states.
Open-FF, which is the project associated with this web site, is independent of FracFocus, the industry and state regulators. Open-FF adds to the FracFocus data to correct errors and reduce ambiguity, calculate chemical quantities and provide perspective. Data, code and tools generated by Open-FF are open source and available to everyone. Development on Open-FF began in 2018. The FracTracker Alliance has sponsored Open-FF maintenance and development since 2023.
How Open-FF improves access to fracking chemical data
Cleaning, curating, and organizing the data to produce a value-added data set. This set includes the original FracFocus data along with features generated by Open-FF that calculate masses, flag errors, identify trade secret claims, link to hazard information and more. These data sets are currently updated monthly and we provide summaries of new disclosures.
Providing an online data browser that offers perspectives on specific chemicals, companies and locations without downloading or coding. For example, using this tool, users can quickly see (a) where a company is operating and its pattern of trade secret use, (b) how many times a specific chemical such as ethylene glycol has been used and its hazard profile and (c) what is the pattern of fracking within a given state.
Producing reports of data errors and omissions. These reports outline specific problems we have discovered such as massive misreporting of water use. We try to inform companies of the issues so that they can correct them. We are currently planning a series of error reports on issues such as sand-dominated disclosures, duplicated records, and inconsistent mass reports.
Resources
- Open-FF Browser – Explore FracFocus data in depth by chemical, company or geography without downloading
- FracTracker – Find a wealth of maps and other data about all wells in Ohio, not just those in FracFocus.
cover art by Becky Mansfield (modified by author)