Ohio Counties Get $141.9M in Taxes From Drillers

Ohio’s Utica Shale is continuing to pay off in a big way for drilling counties, according to a new report.

Ohio’s eight drilling counties got an infusion of $141.9 million in real estate property taxes from drilling from 2010-2017, according to the report released Wednesday by the Ohio Oil and Gas Association and Energy in Depth.

Those counties are Carroll, Columbiana, Harrison, Belmont, Guernsey, Jefferson, Monroe and Noble, Kallanish Energy reports.

The counties with the biggest tax collections from 2010 through 2017 were Harrison ($40.8 million), Carroll ($34.6 million) and Monroe ($17.2 million).

The counties with the biggest tax collections in 2017 were Harrison ($12.5 million), Carroll ($8.5 million) and Belmont ($8.0 million).

“Those are exciting numbers,” said Matt Hammond, executive vice president of the Ohio Oil and Gas Association.

In a 2017 report, those groups said six Ohio counties had received $43 million from 2010 to 2015 in shale drilling property taxes, a number that has tripled in recent years as Utica production has grown.

It’s projected the eight Ohio shale counties could collect $200 million to $250 million in property taxes between 2016-2026, said Dan Alfaro of Energy in Depth.

All of that money from Ohio’s so-called ad valorem taxes goes to local counties, with schools getting up to 70% of that extra income, the report states.

How much drillers pay is determined by a state formula. The money goes to counties that then distribute the money to schools and municipalities, depending on local tax levies and millage totals.

Under Ohio law, oil and gas are taxed as real property. The 2017 tax collections are based on 2015 production totals.

Two counties dropped in tax collections from 2016 to 2017: Carroll (from $11.8 million to $8.5 million) and Harrison (from $17.3 million to $12.5 million), as drillers have looked elsewhere in eastern Ohio for oil and natural gas.

In 2015, Ohio produced 16.4 million barrels of oil and 1.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. It ad valoerm taxes from that year were $48.2 million, up from $47.9 million in the previous year.

The data does not include production growth in Ohio’s Utica shale in 2018 and 2019.

Thanks to Kallanish Energy for content in this piece.