With billions of dollars at stake, Ohio landowners, lawyers and out-of-state dealers are rushing to lock up tens of thousands of acres for natural gas drilling in eastern Ohio.Those parties want to get a bigger cut of the money to be made on drilling in the oil-rich Utica shales 8,000 feet under Ohio.One of the biggest players, Oklahoma-based Chesapeake Energy, has leased more than 1.2 million acres in Ohio and expects to add 300,000 more. Its Ohio acreage could produce as much as $20 billion, the company said in its recent quarterly report.Company President and Chief Executive Aubrey McClendon said on CNBC’s Mad Money With Jim Cramer that he expects the Utica shale to produce 25 billion barrels of oil, natural gas liquids and natural gas.Chesapeake’s statements were the first drillers’ assessment offered about the potential of Ohio’s Utica shale and may be the best proof that an Ohio drilling rush is at hand.The potential for tapping into that newly found wealth has prompted Ohioans like Bob Rea, who farms near Salem, to aggregate or pool large tracts of land to get more favorable terms from drilling companies.It is a grass-roots effort that is spreading across Ohio. It expedites the land acquisition process for drillers. That makes the drillers more willing to give landowners what they want: higher prices on lease bonuses, higher royalties on natural gas and oil production and better environmental protections.Rea’s group began in late 2010 with 18 families in Columbiana County and has grown to 3,000 individuals with 200,000 acres stretching from Youngstown to Canton to the Ohio River. That acreage in nine counties, including Portage and Stark, is six times the size of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.Because of their work, it is almost impossible in some Ohio counties to assemble new large tracts of land for drillers.According to some estimates, 65 percent of Carroll and Columbiana counties is under lease to drillers via old and new leases and continuing aggregation efforts.The aggregatorsAnyone can aggregate or assemble land for lease. It may simply be neighbors banding together.It may be attorneys like Canton’s William G. Williams of Krusliak, Wilkins, Griffiths & Dougherty Co. LPA, who has signed four leases involving 1,000 landowners and covering 45,000 acres — mostly in Columbiana and Carroll counties — since last October. In some cases, out-of-state companies are trying to put together land deals — in exchange for a cut of leasing bonuses and royalties on the gas-oil produced.The biggest trend in Ohio is grass-roots groups that have formed in counties like Columbiana, Carroll and Harrison to seek better deals from drillers. It is an idea that is spreading to other counties where the leasing boom is growing.Rea’s group, the Associated Landowners of the Ohio Valley, has assembled 200,000 acres in Columbiana, Carroll, Jefferson, Mahoning, Trumbull, Harrison, Tuscarawas, Portage and Stark counties.His group signed a lease in February on 100,000 acres with Oklahoma-based Chesapeake Energy. The deal with Chesapeake provides payment to landowners of $2,250 per acre in leasing bonuses plus a 17.5 percent royalty on oil and gas produced by any resulting wells.The industry standard is 12 percent on royalties. Some Ohioans report 20 percent royalties. Some royalties are determined after expenses are paid. Others are paid before expenses. Royalties are how landowners stand to make the most money on leases if the wells are successful.Some lease bonuses in Ohio have topped $3,600 an acre. The company annually pays that amount for up to five years. Some of the first landowners were paid under $100 an acre in bonuses.Rea’s group is beginning new lease talks on the additional acreage. That includes 78,000 acres assembled in Trumbull County in the last 45 days, he said.“It’s not slowing down at all,” he said of the leasing boom.Negotiating protectionsRea, 58, of Salem Township, where he raises specialty crops on 40 acres, is especially proud of the environmental protections found in his group’s leases.Most drilling companies’ leases run three to four pages but his group’s leases are 22 pages long, filled with additional safeguards to protect drinking water and the land around well sites and to deal with potential problems, he said.“Sticking together got us a pretty good lease,” he said. “We offered something that all the drillers wanted: a large footprint of land. We had something they wanted: land. What gives your land more value is, quite simply, more land.”The effort mushroomed into other counties and became far bigger than anyone had ever expected, he said.His group was started to educate and to protect its members, he said. ‘‘All we tried to do is to level the playing field a little bit,” he said. ‘‘There is strength in numbers.”Chesapeake and other energy companies contacted by the Beacon Journal refuse to discuss their land-acquisition efforts in Ohio. Chesapeake’s McClendon has said he expects 25,000 wells to be drilled into the Utica shale over the next few decades, with an investment of $200 billion.In its quarterly report, Chesapeake said it anticipates creating a joint venture or other partnership agreement to develop the Utica shale in Ohio, perhaps by Dec. 31. What’s undergroundChesapeake’s findings in Ohio are evidence of “a major new liquids-rich play in the Utica shale,” the company said.The company says oil is more likely in the western part of the Utica formation in Ohio and natural gas in the eastern part. In the middle, wet gases such as propane, butane, ethane and white gas are most likely, Chesapeake said. Such products are desirable and highly lucrative. They sell for about $5 a barrel less than petroleum but are far more valuable than natural gas.The company’s findings, collected in the last 24 months, are based on 2,000 well logs, full petrophysical data from about 200 wells, 3,200 feet of proprietary core samples from nine wells and production results from three wells, Chesapeake said.It has drilled six horizontal and nine vertical wells in eastern Ohio.Ohio’s Utica shale is ‘‘likely most analogous but economically superior to the Eagle Ford shale in South Texas,” the company said. The Texas formation that is under development runs for 400 miles in a swath that is 50 miles wide.Chesapeake’s McClendon called the Utica shale a “transformative find” for the United States and possibly “one of our biggest discoveries in U.S. history.”The initial Ohio wells are producing “really big numbers,” he said on CNBC.Chesapeake has five rigs operating in Ohio to drill wells. It expects eight to be in operation by the end of this year, 16 to 20 by the end of next year and as many as 40 by the end of 2014.It is opening a Canton regional office and hiring 70 staffers to oversee drilling in Stark and surrounding counties.The company has invested more than $1 billion in its Ohio leases and anticipates as many as 12,000 wells from those Ohio leases.The company expects to use horizontal drilling and hydrofracturing, a process of forcing water, sand and small amounts of chemicals into the underground rock formation to free up oil, natural gas liquids and natural gas.It is a process that is under fire by some who say it threatens drinking water. The industry says that fracking is safe and has been used for more than 50 years.Other groups formedIn Carroll County, a grass-roots group has signed its first leases. Standing United Really Excels (SURE) has assembled 9,000 acres with 450 landowners and signed leases with Rex Energy Corp. of State College, Pa., said spokesman Larry Jenkins.Jenkins’ group rejected an offer from Chesapeake, getting something better than Rea’s organization.“Our deal absolutely blows theirs away,” he said. “It was a little bit of a gamble but it has paid off in a big way.”Jenkins, 40, has 255 acres in Carroll County’s Washington Township.Aggregating the land was the best way to go, he said.“It was absolutely worth it,” he said. ‘‘The payments will help assure that family farms in this county won’t have to be sold because of financial problems. Leases like this are providing farmers with real financial security.”Rex Energy said in an Aug. 2 statement that the firm was spending $40 million on leases for 11,000 acres in Carroll County. The average lease bonus will be about $3,600 an acre. The first wells will be drilled next year, the company said.Canton’s Williams signed a lease in October involving 170 landowners on 13,500 acres in Columbiana and Carroll counties. The agreement is with Chesapeake Energy.He later added three leases covering 31,500 acres. He is working on a new deal in southern Ohio that will cover 15,000 more acres.His projects are in Stark, Portage, Columbiana, Carroll, Jefferson, Harrison, Tuscarawas, Trumbull, Mahoning and, more recently, Guernsey, Belmont and Noble counties.Assembling such acreage does make a big difference, Williams said. “You have more leverage in negotiations and you are likely to get not just more money but a landowner-friendly lease,” he said.Such leases may mean that drillers must pay royalties before expenses are deducted and that can make a huge difference, he said.The epicenter of the drillers’ interest is Columbiana, Carroll, Jefferson and Harrison counties, with new interest spreading south to Guernsey, Belmont and Noble counties, he said.New players have come into Ohio since April 1 and swollen the number of drillers and leasing teams and increased the competition, he said. Jack Sordoni is also involved in land aggregation in Ohio. He is president of Pittsburgh-based Homeland Energy Ventures LLC and has made pitches in Canton, Barberton and Copley Township.Sordoni said his firm, in collaboration with Pittsburgh-based Silvercliff Resources LLC, is representing more than 1,000 landowners in Summit, Portage, Wayne, Holmes, Guernsey, Harrison, Carroll, Tuscarawas, Belmont. Monroe, Trumbull and Ashtabula counties.His firm has lined up “tens of thousands of acres” across Ohio, he said.He is handling more than 4,000 acres in Wayne County’s Paint Township and has clients in seven or eight Wayne County townships, he said.His company claims 5 percent of lease bonuses and renewals and 5 percent of royalties. It has 40,000 acres brokered in Pennsylvania.Summit County and its neighboring counties are in “a very, very good situation” to attract drillers, and more oil than natural gas will probably be found locally, he said. “There’s a heckuva lot to like about Summit County.” Bob Downing can be reached at 330-996-3745 or bdowning@thebeaconjournal.com.