Cutter Oil spills, leaks have some angry at Blood & Oil company

Discovery premiered the story of the Cutter family from Ohio last night in the reality series Blood & Oil. Here’s the show’s description via the network:

Meet the Cutters – a blue collar, Midwestern family determined to keep their oil company alive amidst Ohio’s aggressive oil boom. Running on blood, sweat, tears and pure instinct, in this real life David vs. Goliath struggle to keep their business and family together, the Cutter’s will do whatever it takes to keep Cutter Oil Company afloat as they take on big oil in this race for black gold.

Doing a little research, it turns out that Cutter Oil has had its own share of publicity problems following spills and leaks. Via a piece from the Sun News, on Oct. 27, 2011 a natural gas containment well leaked in the area of Broadview Heights. The escaping gas from the tank operated by Cutter Oil was said to have sickened some residents and angered others. One of the residents said the neighbors complained of burning eyes and a sore throat.

A state inspector informed a resident that the tank in question was supposed to be fitted with a meter that shuts off the gas upon capacity. There was not one in this instance.

In September of 2011, roughly 200 gallons of crude oil spilled from one of Cutter Oil’s wells in the same area of Broadview Heights. The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency determined that the cause of the leak was due to a fitting failure on the subsurface flow line from the well head.

Cutter Oil was issued a Notice of Violation from the Ohio EPA for the impact to waters of the state. At the time of the report Beth Cutter, featured prominently in Blood & Oil, had no comment.

In 2012, Sun News had another feature about the strain of oil and gas well proliferation in Ohio and how a state law (House Bill 278) took away the ability of local municipalities to have much say as to where these wells can be constructed. City leaders with Broadview Heights came under fire from citizens when they granted Cutter Oil a 13-acre right-of-way to drill behind a house owned by Susan Fowler.

Fowler claims that her family experienced headaches and vomiting during the process of the 3 wells built, with the closest only being 89 feet from her property line. She and her husband moved to Portland, Oregon because of the wells. She said, “You couldn’t pay me to live in Ohio again. It was our dream home. Now it’s a lovely home right on top of an industrial site. We feel like refugees from our city and our state.”

During an open forum in December 2009 about the regulations of gas and oil drilling in the town of North Royalton, residents there expressed their doubts about the developments. One civic-minded attendee, David Dudas, singled out his own negative experiences with Cutter Oil and CJ Cutter in particular.

“We were sold a bill of goods and money is not even the issue. We were promised landscaping, yet chunks of rock ended up in our yards. Cutter Oil doesn’t care about pedestrians. They speed up and down the street all the time, including you C.J. (Cutter).”

Via Cutter Oil’s official website, they have the following to say about their focus on the environment:

“In this day and age, we understand that one of the landowner’s biggest concerns is the environment. We have all seen the effects of reckless behavior on the environment. Cutter Oil takes every possible precaution to ensure the safety of the environment in all surrounding areas. We treat each landowner’s property as if it were our own.”

In this line of work there’s going to be accidents and the debate over fracking is still wide open, but while Blood & Oil is billed as small business vs. big industry, there’s a number of “little guys” who aren’t going to be pulling for Cutter Oil anytime soon.

Photos: Discovery Channel