Ohio recorded 2,529 oil and gas incidents between 2015 and 2025, with annual totals climbing from 103 to 268 over that decade, according to a new report from two environmental watchdog groups that says the state's inspection and enforcement system is stretched far too thin to keep up.
FracTracker Alliance and the Buckeye Environmental Network released the analysis, titled “Rising Incidents, Lax Oversight: Ohio Oil and Gas Incidents, Inspections, and Enforcement 2015–2025,” raising concerns about inspector workloads, how incidents get reported, and how violations are enforced, as detailed by Cleveland.com. The groups found that incidents climbed from 195 in 2019 to 279 in 2021, dipped to 205 in 2023, then jumped to 284 in 2024 before settling at 268 in 2025, per the same report. FracTracker Alliance puts the full report title and scope in writing as covering incidents, inspections and enforcement across that same eleven-year window.
Too Few Inspectors for Too Many Wells
The math behind the staffing numbers is stark. Ohio has only around 25 oil and gas inspectors at the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, which tracks the state's oil and gas industry, plus roughly 15 coordinators in Ohio EPA's Emergency Response program, the report notes. Those inspectors are responsible for watching over roughly 96,000 wells statewide, a ratio FracTracker Alliance lays out in its published findings.
The imbalance gets more extreme at the local level. One inspector is responsible for about 1,500 wells in Harrison County alone, while another covers 24,000 wells spread across 26 counties, the report found. Unrealistic inspector workloads have practical consequences for how frequently wells get inspected and how problems are identified in the first place, according to the report's findings as relayed by the same account.
Questions About How Incidents Get Labeled
Beyond staffing, the report takes aim at how the state classifies and discloses incident severity, flagging what it calls potentially misleading descriptions issued by the state. Descriptions of incidents labeled minor are often not convincing as minor, the report argues, and watchdogs say ODNR too often relies on well owners' own voluntary efforts to fix problems rather than enforcing corrections directly.
A 2016 case illustrates the pattern researchers highlight. Static electricity caused a conventional well tank to explode, releasing nearly 2,500 gallons of crude oil and 210 gallons of wastewater, yet the incident was classified as minor and stayed open for four days, the report found. That well had gone uninspected for 12 years before the explosion, and records show it wasn't checked again until 2017, 2019, and twice in 2024.
Fines Without Teeth, Report Says
The report also questions Ohio's enforcement toolkit. Violations are often issued for administrative lapses, such as failing to report production or maintain liability insurance, and the report says the state does not take advantage of civil penalties that could push well owners toward better compliance. ODNR can issue compliance orders, suspend permits, and take other enforcement steps, but the Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management does not appear to have authority to impose civil penalties directly through an administrative order, the report states.
Instead, under Ohio Revised Code Section 1509.071, a division chief who finds a well owner out of compliance with certain final orders must declare any applicable surety bond forfeited and certify that forfeiture to the Ohio Attorney General for collection, rather than levying a fine outright. Separately, Ohio Revised Code Section 1509.04 lays out the chief's authority to enforce the law through compliance notices and agreements, but the report argues that without fines attached, those notices are easy for operators to disregard.
Washington County Injection Wells Remain Idle
The report's timing lands alongside an ongoing situation in Washington County, where four injection wells used for disposing of fracking waste brine underground, much of which comes from out of state, have been idle since their owners agreed to shut them on July 1 and 2, 2026. According to Cleveland.com, ODNR prompted the wells to stop operating earlier in 2026 out of concern they were contaminating nearby oil and gas production wells.
A separate account from WTAP describes the shutdown differently, reporting that the well owners voluntarily agreed to halt operations on July 1 and 2 after ODNR had drafted suspension orders. Bev Reed said at a Wednesday press conference that the wells were never officially ordered to stop, leaving no clear plan, timeframe, or conditions for reopening, and that the four wells remained suspended as of her remarks.
Marietta College geology professor David Jeffery said last summer that Ohio failed to properly analyze subsurface geology before allowing injection wells to operate in the first place. Jeffery said fracking waste is migrating beyond injection-well boundaries, threatening nearby production wells and drinking-water sources. Seismic activity in Washington County had increased almost 20 times over since 2023, according to officials cited by The New York Times.
A Pattern Beyond One County
The incident counts aren't evenly spread across Ohio. Athens, Hocking and Washington counties together recorded 221 incidents from 2015 through 2025, roughly 9% of the statewide total, according to Athens Independent, which also reported that incidents have averaged 243 a year since 2016 with an overall trend of a 5% annual increase. An earlier FracTracker analysis of a prior dataset found Washington, Muskingum and Noble counties carrying the highest incident counts, with roughly 70 incidents each as of September 2023.
The comparisons extend beyond Ohio's borders, too. One Ohio law and environment professor has said that in some ways, Pennsylvania does a better job regulating the oil and gas industry than Ohio, according to a 2025 report from StateImpact Pennsylvania.
