The latest well is being drilled in an area less than an hour from Columbus.

Public records at the Ohio Department of Natural Resources show the shift in drilling activity in Ohio.

“We’re starting to see leasing activity come into Central Ohio,” said ODNR spokeswoman Heidi Hetzel.

Hetzel explains that revised geological maps of Ohio indicate oil and gas rich shale stretches further west than originally thought.

“Knox county for sure Morrow, and Marion headed into western Ohio,” Hetzel said.

On farmland, near the Licking County, Knox County border is a new exploratory well. Devon Energy of Oklahoma City is drilling down nearly 4-thousand feet.

The company hopes it hits natural gas and oil in what’s known as the Utica shale. Access to the well site is restricted. Workers and supply vendors have to check in with a Knox County sheriff deputy at the entrance to the well field.

In Utica, Lanny White says he’s only heard of the new drilling activity and seen it from a distance.

“I heard that, yes, my first reaction is what are they doing in this area?” White asked.

Evidently they think there might be some oil deep underground here.

“Well, uh, Good luck with that, I guess,” White said. “Well, I mean, I don’t like anybody from out of town coming around here. If anybody reaps the benefits I’d hope it would be somebody local.”

At the Duke-Duchess gas station at Routes 62 and 13, Utica construction worker Allen Keegan waits each morning for a ride to his jobsite outside Columbus. He’s noticed a change since shale drilling began.

“I’ve seen more people coming in to get gas for work in the morning. I think it will bring more people in. Hopefully, the people we’ve got here they’ll give them jobs first instead of bringing a bunch of people from out of town in,” Keegan said.

It’s too early to tell whether the gently rolling landscapes around Utica, Mount Vernon, and Johnstown will yield sufficient amounts of oil and gas to attract major development of the shale fields deep below. ODNR’s Hetzel said Devon and other companies are still exploring the potential resource.

“We actually have only had about a dozen wells come into production in the Utica shale area. That said we’ve had over 200 wells drilled. Many of those wells may not go beyond exploration,” Hetzel said.

But, Hetzel anticipates more drilling, especially in areas that skirt the northernmost Columbus suburbs. She explains that locating oil and gas deposits thousands of feet below ground is an inexact science.

“Geology is not constant. You can cross the street and the geology thousands of feet below the surface will have changed dramatically,” Hetzel said.

As drilling activities move closer to urban populations, Hetzel said companies face stricter standards to protect underground and surface drinking water supplies.

Devon Energy has a clause in its well permit to abandon the Knox County site if the well proves unproductive. Current ODNR records show no exploratory wells in Morrow, Marion, or other counties surrounding Columbus. But, the geologic map now shows potential oil and shale gas deposits as far west as the Franklin-Madison county line.

But the positions are being created on the expectation of increased revenue.

Department of Natural Resources spokeswoman Heidi Henzel-Evans says taking the number of inspectors from 30 to 90 will be funded by increased revenue from the state’s severance tax on oil and natural gas drillers.

Hetzel-Evans says traditional vertical well drilling has decreased in recent months, but shale drilling is still booming.

“In the year 2013-2014, where we’ll see more activity in the shale formations, we’ll have many more boots on the grounds to address any issues related to those larger operations.”

Hetzel-Evans says there are now about 54,000 oil and gas wells around the state. She says only 65 of those are in the Utica Shale region, but that number could reach several hundred by the end of the year.

One major change involves record keeping. The health care law requires hospitals to have electronic medical records. The goal is to reduce medical errors and cuts costs.

The OSU Medical Center finished its conversion to electronic records last year. But CEO Dr. Steven Gabbe said the medical center began planning for the switch in 2008.

“Our patients have full access to the electronic medical record, they can see the results of their tests, they can communicate with their doctors and nurses,” Gabbe said.

E-records also are expected to cut back on duplicate testing. Let’s take blood tests for example. Doctors within the same health system would be able to review a patient’s record and see blood work results instead of ordering and paying for another blood test.

Ohio Health also began integrating electronic records before the law was passed. Now the system is making sure their system matches the law’s requirements.

Another requirement stands to affect hospitals more. Beginning next year, some hospitals taking part in a pilot program will start to change how they charge patients and insurance companies. Hospitals are encouraged to switch to bundled payments.

Right now, if you’re on Medicare and you go to the hospital for say, a gall bladder attack, lab fees, radiology fees and doctors’ fees all are charged separately. Under a bundle payment, hospitals would receive one flat rate.

Ohio Health president and CEO David Blom said the goal is to lower the cost of treatment.

“If there’s an episode of care that costs $9,000, if the provider community can do it effectively and efficiently for less than $9,000, those dollars are kept by those folks. If it costs more they are at risk for it. So the bundle payment is intended to create the incentives for all parts of the systems to deliver it more efficiently and effectively,” Blom said.

Neither OSU nor Ohio Health will be taking part in the federal bundle payment pilot program. Ohio Health is reviewing it.

But OSU’s Steven Gabbe said the system is equipped to handle bundled payments if they’re implemented.

The new health care law also requires hospitals to cut re-admissions – patients who have to go back to the hospital for preventable follow-up visits. As many as a quarter of people who are hospitalized for serious ailments such as heart attack are back in the hospital within a month of being discharged.

Beginning in fiscal year 2013, the health care law would penalize health systems for excessive re-admissions for pneumonia, heart failure and heart attack. OSU’s readmission rates are in line with the national average – about 25 percent. Dr. Gabbe said a key component to reducing re-admissions is communication.

“If the patient has his or her medications, if they have a follow up visit within a short time…we communicate effectively with their primary care physician in their community we can prevent that readmission,” Gabbe said.

Gabbe anticipates this readmission penalty will include additional conditions as the law tries to contain costs.

Ohio Health’s David Blom said he’s not worried about the program’s penalties.

“Yes, there is a revenue issue there but it’s not sufficiently concerning for us as we really think about this. We’re focused on minimizing the number of re-admissions,” Blom said.

If the Supreme Court upholds the law, nearly one million additional Ohioans will be eligible for medical care.

Both Gabbe and Blom anticipate a shortage of physicians.

Blom said Ohio Health has hired more primary care doctors. As the way health care is delivered changes, Blom expects doctors will be spending more time with their patients.

“If we can coordinate the care by deeper relationship of a patient with their primary care physician, they can avoid perhaps other steps in the system with specialists because they’re dealt with on the front end,” Blom said.

Gabbe said preventive clinics with pharmacists and nurse practitioners will have to be used more to meet the need. But that won’t be enough.

“We think we will need to train more physicians. And there’s been talk about shortening the length of time students need to be in medical school. We think we need to train more nurses.” Gabbe said.

But what if the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down the law? Gabbe and Blom maintain their hospitals will continue on the same path to make health care more efficient and effective.

“Well we will continue on the same course and follow the same strategic plan that we have today,”Gabbe said.

“It won’t be for naught. We need to reform the health care system…the economy will not be able to withstand the current escalation of health care costs over the long term,” Blom added.

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine says the 2010 Gulf Coast Oil Spill sent BP stocks tumbling, which hurt some state pensions. DeWine says BP falsely claimed to have adequate safety procedures in place.

“And as a result, people invested. In this case, pensioners of the state of Ohio bought stock and then lost money as a result of BP’s bad actions,” DeWine said.

DeWine could specify how much Ohio pensions lost as a result of the spill, but he said “we think it’s in the tens of millions of dollars.”

BP did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Click the play button above to hear a longer discussion between DeWine and Statehouse correspondent Bill Cohen.

If it’s Wednesday at noon, you can expect to hear the tornado sirens. The sirens are tested each week to make sure they’ll work in the event of a real threat. They’ve sounded three times this year in Franklin County for real warnings and 42 times across the state.

Since 2007, the number of tornado warnings issued for Ohio has tripled. The reasons why are pretty simple: more severe weather and better technology.

But because we’re hearing the warnings more often experts admit they’re becoming less effective.

“The county is very large so I tend to go to a weather station first to find out where it is. So, seriously enough to check, but not seriously enough to dash to the basement,” Johanna McKenzie, of Columbus, said.

Rachel White, also of Columbus, said does not take tornado warnings very seriously, “Because most of the time it never amounts to anything…it seems like so many instances of like them going off and nothing happens. Like, there it goes again, another day.”

That ambivalence is even worse in Plains states which can experience hundreds of tornadoes a year. Meteorologists call it “car alarm” syndrome, where something is heard so often it becomes background noise.

A storm last spring provided a tragic illustration. Last May, a tornado warning was issued for Joplin, Missouri. As the tornado moved toward the city, it intensified to an EF 5, the most violent kind. Not everyone heeded the warning, and 160 people died.

To try to overcome complacency in Tornado Alley, the National Weather Service is trying out a new warning system in Kansas and Missouri.

“The intent is not to scare, but it is to inform,” Meteorologist Mike Hudson said.

Hudson is chief operations officer at the Kansas City National Weather Service. He read the most severe warning.

“This is a life threatening situation. You could be killed if not underground or in a tornado shelter. Complete destruction of entire neighborhoods is likely. Many well built homes and businesses will be completely swept from their foundations. Debris will block most roadways. Mass devastation is likely making the area unrecognizable to survivors.”

Hudson hopes the impact based warnings will help people relate to a storm’s potential.

Not all warnings will sound as intense as the one in this report. A catastrophic tornado warning will be reserved for Joplin-like tornadoes that have been confirmed on the ground. The other impact based warnings describe situations of significant building damage, uprooted trees or roads blocked by debris.
Columbus is not Tornado Alley. And the old warning system remains in place here.

About 70 percent of the time tornado warnings are false alarms. That’s because the current radars allow the National Weather Service to issue a tornado warning about 13 minutes before a tornado actually forms, if it ever does. Channel 4 Meteorologist Ben Gelber admits there’s a delicate balance between safety and crying wolf.

“There’s no guarantee a tornado will drop from the clouds, so you issue a warning to cover a wide area just because there’s that small chance, but a very real risk once rotation is established. Trouble is, the public has heard so many warnings that there’s a tendency to wait until something is dangerously close. And if you have a storm that’s moving at 40 or 50 mph that can be too late,” he said.

Gelber said the only answer to what he calls “crying wolf” warnings is a radar set to be at the weather service’s finger tips later this year. Gelber said the new technology will give meteorologists a 3-D look inside a thunderstorm where tornadoes form.

“The hope is that technology will reduce the number of warnings when nothing touches down. In other words, a forecaster will have a better since of a real risk of a rotation leading to a tornado,” Gelber said.

The National Weather Service could decide this fall if the new impact based warnings will be used everywhere.

Rachel White, who earlier said she does not heed tornado warnings, said an impact based warning might change her mind.

“Yeah, that would definitely make me take it more seriously.”

President Obama’s visit to Ohio was to address a serious issue: America’s energy crisis. But Mr. Obama started out his speech by talking about what’s been on many Ohioan’s minds the past few days, their March Madness brackets.

“I did have the Buckeyes headed to the Final Four,” Mr. Obama told the crowd that went into cheers. “And I promise you I didn’t do it because I knew I was coming here because I am cold-blooded when it comes to filling out my brackets.”

But Mr. Obama soon got down to business. He brought up gas prices that have hit $4 a gallon in many places around the state. And the president told the crowd most Americans cannot afford the extra expense, and that America cannot afford to continue to be foreign oil dependent.

“How do we make sure that these spikes in gas prices don’t keep on happening? Because we’ve seen this movie before. This happens just about every year. This happened this time last year. Gas prices were even higher in the spring and summer of 2008. It has been going on for years, for decades,” he said.

Many people who attended the event support the Obama Administration. But as the president began to talk about some Republican presidential candidates touting plans to bring back $2 gas, it became clear that one person was not a fan of Mr. Obama. A man began to heckle the president by trying to talk over him and promote what the man said was his book.

“What specifically is your? Sir. I’m here to speak to these folks.”

But the interruption continued.

“Show me some courtesy. I’ll be happy to take your book, but don’t interrupt everyone else. Alright?”

Domestic drilling was a hot issue during the last presidential election, and it’s an option not all democratic legislators in Washington are quick to back. But Mr. Obama said he supports domestic oil drilling.

“First of all, we have been drilling. We’re drilling right now. Under my administration America is producing more oil today than any time in the last eight years,” the president said.

But the U.S. uses too much oil, the president said, to rely solely on what it produces.

“We can’t simply drill our way out of the problem. Even if we drill every square inch of this country right now we’re going to be relying on other countries for oil,” he said.

That’s why Mr. Obama said he proposes an “all of the above” energy strategy.

“Yes, we’ll develop as much oil and gas as we can in a safe way. But we’re also going to develop wind power and solar power and advanced bio fuels,” Mr. Obama said.

As part of his Ohio trip, the president took a tour of Ohio State’s Center for Automotive Research which focuses on alternative fuel development such as hydrogen fuel cells and where students built the world’s fastest battery-powered car. Mr. Obama said the key to getting off foreign oil and creating jobs is to invest in alternative energy sources.

“I am not going to seed the wind and solar and advanced battery industries to countries like China and Germany that are making those investments. I want those technologies developed here in Ohio, here in the Midwest, here in America,” he said.

As part of the president’s energy plan, auto companies will have to make cars that get 55 mpg by the middle of the next decade.

The president said Republican presidential candidates reject clean energy and do not support raising fuel standards. Getting into the campaigning spirit, Mr. Obama referred to GOP candidates as members of the “flat earth” society.

“The flat earth crowd they have a different view. They’d rather give $4 billion dollars in tax subsidies to oil companies this year than to invest in clean energy,” the president said.

Earlier in his energy tour, Mr. Obama also announced he wants to fast track production on the southern portion of the Keystone XL Pipeline – a project the president has not always fully supported, and for which Mr. Obama took heat from republicans.

Republican U.S. Senator Rob Portman told reporters Thursday that’s not good enough. Senator Portman said he wants the president to increase production along the entire pipeline that would stretch from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.

ODOT Director Jerry Wray announced the Division of Innovative Delivery yesterday. Last week Wray said ODOT was exploring the idea of highway sponsorships, which are now allowed on federally-operated roads.

The agency is considering other cost reductions, including privatizing rest stops and the Ohio Turnpike.

Among the new regulations: Well operators must submit more comprehensive geological data when requesting a drill site, and the chemical makeup of all drilling wastewater must be tracked electronically.

The state Department of Natural Resources announced the tough new brine injection regulations because of the report’s findings on the well in Youngstown, which it said were based on “a number of coincidental circumstances.”

For one, investigators said, the well began operations just three months ahead of the first quake.

They also noted that the seismic activity was clustered around the well bore, and reported that a fault has since been identified in the Precambrian basement rock where water was being injected.

“Geologists believe it is very difficult for all conditions to be met to induce seismic events,” the report states. “In fact, all the evidence indicates that properly located…injection wells will not cause earthquakes.”

Northeastern Ohio and large parts of adjacent states sit atop the Marcellus Shale geological formation, which contains vast reserves of natural gas that energy companies are rushing to drill using a process known as hydraulic fracturing.

That process involves freeing the gas by injecting water into the earth, but that water needs to be disposed of when companies are done with it. Municipal water treatment plants aren’t designed to remove some of the contaminants found in the wastewater, including radioactive elements. A common practice is to re-inject it into the ground, a practice banned in some states.

The improper placement of the Youngstown well stemmed in part from inadequate geological data being available to regulators, the report states. New rules would require a complete roll of geophysical logs to be submitted to the state.

The document states: “These logs were not available to inform regulators of the possible issues in geologic formations prior to well operation.”

Requiring well operators to submit more comprehensive geologic data is just one of the added regulations the department will either impose immediately or pursue through legislative or rule changes.

Among other changes: Future injection into Precambrian rock will be banned, and existing wells penetrating the formation will be plugged. State-of-the-art pressure and volume monitoring will be required, including automatic shut-off systems. Electronic tracking systems will be required that identify the makeup of all drilling wastewater fluids entering the state.

“Ohio has developed a new set of regulatory standards that positions the state as a national leader in safe and environmentally responsible brine disposal,” Natural Resources Director James Zehringer said in a prepared statement.

“Ohioans demand smart environmental safeguards that protect our environment and promote public health. These new standards accomplish that goal,” Zehringer said.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency gave Ohio regulatory authority over its deep well injection program in 1983, deeming that its state regulations met or exceeded federal standards. The new regulations would be added to those existing rules.

About 6,200 people live in Ontario, Ohio, just outside of Mansfield. For more than two generations General Motors was the city’s big employer. GM also provided an abundant and steady stream of tax revenue.

But almost two years ago it closed the stamping plant. People were forced to move or take a buyout.

The city’s budget was nearly cut in half.

So naturally Mayor Larry Collins was thrilled when Calisolar, a company that makes silicon for solar cells, called about the abandoned GM plant. Here’s Collins last June.

“Just going to be a boon not only, like I say, for Ontario, but for Richland County and areas beyond,” he said.

The state of Ohio offered Calisolar an incentive package worth about a $100 million. And the U.S. Department of Energy guaranteed them a $275 million loan.

“Everything was in place,” Collins said.

But July First Calisolar called.

“Somehow they decided to go somewhere else,” the mayor said.

Mississippi…to build a plant there, creating 1,000 construction jobs and generating nearly a $43 million annual payroll.

Although the GM plant remains empty, Collins says he thinks Ontario is better off without Calisolar.

“Knowing now, as I said, what we know now. Yes, it would’ve been. We would’ve been built up and dropped out,” Collins laughed.

That’s because Calisolar has money problems.

The company, since November, has laid off 114 employees at its Califorinia facilities. And multiple media outlets report as many as three of the company’s projects have stalled.

Mike Brandl, a finance professor at Ohio State University, agrees Ontario “dodged a bullet.”

“What often times happens is you get some of these firms that go community shopping. So they’ll go from one community to the next to the next, and try to work out the best tax break deal that they can get. The problem with it is often times these firms need these tax breaks just to stay in business. And it’s usually a sign there’s something fundamentally wrong with the firm,” Brandl said.

And he Brandl said what happened in Ontario is not that unusual, especially in the Midwest. Racine, Wisconsin is one city that was not so fortunate.

“They had a lot of manufacturing firms that took it on the chin and laid people off and went out of business. And they just went and they spent millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars to try to attract new firms. So these firms would come in, be there for maybe a year or so and then go bankrupt, and they’d do it all over again,” he said.

The Mississippi Development Authority says the Calisolar project is still on. Mississippi did not offer Calisolar a better incentive package than Ohio. But the $600 million project is in a right-to-work state where organized labor is not strong. And Brandl said it’s another good sign that Ontario avoided potential issues.

“A lot of firms, their biggest expense are labor costs. So they think that just by driving down labor costs and getting subsidies from the government that that’s going to be key to their economic success,” Brandl said.

Calisolar did not respond to our requests for an interview.

Ontario Mayor Larry Collins still has hope of filling the old GM plant. He says they have a couple of other companies looking at it.