Some Ohio Amish Selling Out To Frackers, Moving: Tired Of Noise, Truck Accidents
ST CLAIRSVILLE, Ohio, Dec 20 (Reuters) - Farmers in the close-knit Amish community who eschew electricity and most technology, are among landowners capitalizing on a new financial trend in the United States energy boom - selling decades of future oil and natural gas royalties for an immediate pile of cash.
Gulfport Energy Corp, Chesapeake Energy Corp , Anadarko Petroleum Corp and others have spent billions developing oil and gas reserves on land in Ohio's Utica shale formation - often by agreeing to give landowners years of royalties, or a cut of future production, in exchange for the right to drill on their land.
Some Amish, traditionalist Christians numbering about 280,000 across the United States, are sitting on prime drilling land in eastern Ohio, but many say the rapid development is encroaching on their pastoral way of life.
Already this year, several oil trucks have been involved in fatal collisions with Amish horse-drawn buggies in the region's narrow and winding roads. So, many Amish are cashing out to escape the noise as their bucolic landscape of lush green hills becomes dotted with oil storage tanks and rumbles with the buzz of oil rigs.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/23/amish-oil-drilling-boom_n_4492215.html?utm_hp_ref=green