Ohio State Building. (Photo: David DeWitt, Ohio Capital Journal.)
A group called Washington County for Safe Drinking recently filed an ethics complaint With Ohio Joint Legislative Ethics Commission against Ohio’s Republican state senator. Brian Chavez on alleged oil and gas conflicts.
The ethical complaint argues Chavez’s alleged conflict of interest and voting results, while the chairman of the Ohio Senate Energy Committee shows that his priority was personal financial gain.
“The complaint alleges Chavez has a conflict of interest relating to undisclosed business entities and expedited legislation that could benefit those interests,” the complaint said. “When public officials with financial ties to an industry shape regulations that directly benefit it, it undermines public trust across the state.”
Buckeye Environmental Network, Save Ohio Parks and FaCT Ohio also signed the letter calling for an investigation.
“This is a fundamental crisis of public trust that impacts every Ohioan’s right to safe drinking water and ethical stewardship,” Washington County Safe Drinking Water spokeswoman Hillary Royster said in a statement.
Ohio law prohibits members or employees of the Joint Legislative Ethics Committee or denying receipt of a complaint or allegation, said Ohio Joint Legislative Ethics Committee Executive Director Tony Bledsoe.
“I am therefore unable to provide any further comment,” Bledsoe wrote in an email.
When the Capital Journal reached out to Chavez for comment, John Fortney, Republican spokesman in the Ohio Senate,he replied.
“These radicalized local groups could care less about ethics, much less about safe drinking water,” Fortney said in an email. “This is yet another baseless, desperate and empty attack financed by the special interests of a California billionaire whose sole purpose is to destroy Ohio’s oil and gas industry.”
Chavez – who was appointed to the Ohio Senate in December 2023 following the retirement of Frank Hoagland and elected to a four-year term in 2024 – has numerous ties to Ohio’s oil and gas industry.
Before becoming a senator, he was a member of the Oil and Gas Committee, served as a trustee of the Ohio Oil and Gas Association, served on the board of directors of the Southeast Ohio Oil and Gas Association, and managed and owned Reno Oil & Gas, Inc.
Chavez resigned in 2024 as vice president of Heinrich Enterprises, Inc, his wife’s family oil and gas company, by Chavez 2024 Financial Disclosure Statement.
Until 2024, he was CEO of DeepRock Disposal Solutions, a wastewater disposal company that uses sewage injection into deep wells. However, according to the complaint, Chavez was listed as a manager of DeepRock Disposal Solutions in its 2025 annual report filed with the state of West Virginia.
The complaint says Chavez “fails to disclose ownership of DeepRock Disposal Solutions LLC on either the 2023 or 2024 financial disclosure forms.”
“Signing documents as CEO of DeepRock Disposal Solutions LLC, but failing to disclose employment or any other interests with respect to that particular company at any point in the past, is not a standard that the Ohio State Ethics Commission should seek to establish,” the complaint reads.
DeepRock is currently undergoing legal proceedings in the UK Franklin County Common Pleas Court. Brine injected into the DeepRock well migrated underground and surfaced in an abandoned well in Noble County in 2021. DeepRock did not have to pay for the cleanup, and the state spent about $1.3 million to plug the leak and pristine it up.
According to the complaint, Chavez failed to disclose his or his immediate family members’ interests in Heinrich Property LLC, Horizon Partners Investments LLC, Funds Protection Investment LLC, Condevco Operating LLC and DeepRock Disposal Solutions LLC.
“The failure to include on the state financial disclosure form one LLC in which you have an interest is a problem,” the complaint reads. “The failure to fully disclose ownership interests in as many as five or even six LLCs is more than a simple oversight.”
The ethics complaint also alleged that Chavez rushed through legislation that could have benefited him financially.
Ohio Senate Bill 219 would amend the state’s orphan well program by proposing a special fund for plugging orphan wells and simplifying pre-work notification requirements. An orphan well is an abandoned oil and gas well that has no owner, meaning no one is able to properly plug the well.
It also makes it easier for drillers to obtain expedited project reviews, limits liability after a well owner sells one of his wells, and eliminates the requirement for drillers to enter into road development agreements with local governments.
The bill was introduced in June this year Republican Senator Al Landis, it passed the Senate in November and is now in the Ohio House of Representatives.
Since Chavez became senator, Chavez Well Service has bid on five orphan well contracts and won one contract worth more than $200,000according to the complaint.
“If Senate Bill 219 becomes law, the injection drilling industry will make more money with less oversight,” according to the complaint. “Accordingly, Senator Chavez, with both his disclosed and undisclosed interests, could benefit from the provisions of Senate Bill 219.”
Since its inception in 1977, Ohio’s Orphan Well program has plugged approximately 2,300 abandoned wells.
Follow a Capital Journal reporter Megan Henry in Bluesky.
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