Deck the Halls With Gas Abstractors

Wheeling WV Intelligencer
17 December 2010
By Casey Junkins, Staff Writer

The Ohio County Clerk's Office used to be a fairly quite place most of the time, as the amount of money the office collected for copying records only averaged about $200 per month.

Now, however, with the Marcellus Shale natural gas rush continuing to expand in the county, Clerk Patricia Fahey said her office is collecting $4,000-$5,000 per month for copied materials.

As more and more abstractors flood into Fahey's office daily to look up information about owners of mineral rights, the space soon became overcrowded. Now those walking along the second floor of the City-County Building during the day can expect to see crowds of abstractors sitting at tables situated against the wall in the hallway. This arrangement is to help provide room for as many as 60 people looking up deeds each day.

"We just keep adding and adding them," Fahey said of the tables that now number eight. "The tables allow them to go out there and sit down to write or use their computers after looking up properties."

Fahey said Chesapeake Energy - which has already locked up a lot of acreage throughout the county and is preparing to drill near The Highlands and on Dement Road - now has its abstractors working until 5 p.m. each day.

"It may get worse after the first of the year, and I don't know where we are going to put all of them," she said of the anticipated increase in the number of abstractors. "We will just do the best we can to accommodate them."