Posted on 01/09/2008 6:01:24 PM PST by bruinbirdman
The federal ownership of the land and mineral rights is the reasons most of the oil in Alaska is NOT being produced. The majority of the oil production in Alaska is on the state owned land and native land where oil exploration and production is typically encouraged. Federal Lands include the coastal plain of ANWR, that was specifically set aside to be explored for oil production but has been held up.
No he doesn’t.
This is a basic infringement on one of our most basic rights. This “split” rights thing is patently unconstitutional!
The Mullahcracy is using oil as a weapon. The reasonable counter would be to neutralize that weapon by increasing our own production. OPEC would then have no choice but to lower their price. It’s not only sound business, it’s a matter of national security. Oh, and can we please build more refineries? There hasn’t been a new refinery built in 30 yrs.
But we have been expanding and upgrading the existing ones for decades.
The existence of split property rights are just fine. In fact they're our best shot at privatizing control of Federal lands, a way of patenting uses in a manner much the same as discovering a mine. What's unconstitutional in this case is the Feds simply taking mineral rights from the Mars family without just compensation UNLESS the Mars family never purchased those rights on already split estate land.
I thought this was going to be an article about Kucinich seeing extraterrestrials.
To produce coalbed methane, the natural gas in question, you commonly have to pump the water out of the coal to get the methane to desorb and be producible as natural gas.
Commonly, though, those same coal beds serve as aquifers in the region, and the water is produced for human and animal consumption.
I'd wager that is the source of the conflict.
Last time I checked its called "precepitation". Now, it can be somewhat difficult to forecast accurately, but it does happen eventually...
It’s not water, they just don’t want people driving around their property.
But in order to get the methane out of the coal bed (desorbtion), the water has to be pumped out.
Coal beds are commonly near-surface aquifers in the Northern Powder River Basin (and in the Williston Basin as well), and the drawdown of the aquifers may be the reason for the complaint.
Wells for both human and livestock consumption produce water from the coals. I'd bet a large number of stock wells on the ranch draw water from the coals, which is expensive to change--if you can.
I had the same thought. Drilling itself won't use much water. And any water produced along with oil would likely not be potable water but would be very salty. However, water might be injected into underground oil reservoirs late in field life to maintain reservoir pressure and recover more oil. I suspect that injected water could come from deep formations rather than surface water.
They might have more of a water loss problem from a coal discovery if a coal slurry pipeline is used to transport the coal. Here's one such pipeline in Nevada that uses a billion gallons of water a year. Link.
Coal could be transported in train cars. Miles and miles of train cars. And what happens if the coal is shallow and the economic way to produce it is strip mining.
I think the Mars people are right to be worried, but legally they may be out of luck unless they can buy the mineral rights or the company planning development.
I’m sure he never purchased them, based on the information given, and the current state of those rights across the West. I think very, very few mineral rights are transferred. With the value of minerals going up, and the discovery of oil at more and more locations (inevitable, as the world is awash in oil) everyone keeps them in the family in hopes of an oil find, and then they lease then one more time to some oil interest.
Dave upthread was right though, the minerals rights can only be leased from the state and not owned by an individual or company.
What Mars is doing is trying to protect his land rights. If the current ‘owner’ of the mineral rights takes the water in the process exercising his mineral rights, Mars is left with land that isn’t any good for grazing.
Someone on another thread about this case talked about the unfairness of someone like Mars with all his money being able to ‘outgun’ the oil interests in court.
I then pointed out that there have been decades of ‘abuse’ by the oil interests in court because, until now, it has been the oil interests with the big money. They’ve now met their match, and there may be a different outcome in court. I hope so. I also hope that someone will find the way to retrieve that oil and gas without disturbing the water.
If Mars has been using that water, hasn't he established a claim on at least a prescriptive right which would then require compensation if harmed? Further, his surface rights should be purchased by which to develop the mineral estate, IOW the gas may not be his but access to it is. He may not be able to deny that access to a mineral prospective developer, but at least he should be compensated for whatever loss of existing use of surface rights results along with a guarantee to mitigate damage to the site before development commences.
If he can't prevent the State from drilling on his land, then he doesn't have complete ownership of it.
It's the same reason I object to things like neighborhood covenants. People that didn't pay for your property telling you what you can/cannot do with it, or in this case, extracting wealth from it w/o just compensation.
It depends upon whether you own a particular contract for use or the whole enchilada. Both are property.
My understanding of property rights is that they are rights the individual with respect to his property to acquire, use and dispose of his property as he sees fit.
Those freedoms are limited to the property that one owns. If one owns the development rights, that's one thing. If it's the mineral rights that's another. If one owns both, then there is yet more control. Nothing is infinite. For example, one doesn't typically own the air space whether for transportation or for the distribution of electromagnetic signals; above a certain altitude is a socialized commons. I would argue that such is ultimately a bad thing, but that's how it is.
Since I’m familiar with both areas you’re talking about (a desert drilling situation, say, here in Nevada) and that area of Montana/Wyoming, here’s some perspective from a farmer:
In Nevada, (and many desert areas) what you have is alluvial infill in the valley areas. Much of our oil/gas drilling in Nevada is now happening up on benches above the valley floors, because the net:net distance to the oil/gas bearing layers are shorter from up on a bench than in a valley floor.
The issue with water in Nevada is of course, highly political and charged, but the general water development is for water in the alluvial fill in the valleys, recharged by snowmelt coming down off the mountains. The impact of oil/gas drilling in desert alluvium formations is minimal, since once you hit a water bearing layer, it is typically water from there on down.
Now, let’s shift up to that area of MT/WY where this fella is. There are “perched” water tables up above the coal bearing layers. If you drill through these water bearing layers and down into the coal, you’ll quite possibly drain the water out of the water bearing layer up high and cause significant and irreversible damage to water wells in the higher strata.
We see this rarely in Nevada, usually only in very select areas where we have a boundary layer of hard calcium carbonate, which we call “caliche.” Sometimes, you see these very isolated perched water tables holding water above, oh, 40 to 50’ in depth - and if you punch through that layer, there’s nothing but dry sand and gravel for at least 100’ further down. At 40 to 50’ water tables, deeply-rooted grasses and alfalfa can reach that naturally. At 100+ feet deep, there’s no way to “sub-irrigate” a meadow.
As far as I’m concerned, the guy has a legit beef if the oil/gas drillers aren’t sealing their wells and are allowing perched water to drop out the bottom.
Split estates are the law of the west.
They’re also the #1 reason why we westerners would dearly love everyone else in the country to shut their pieholes and get out of our business.
There are the following estates on a piece of ground just about anywhere in the west:
1. Water rights to springs and seeps on the surface.
2. Water rights to underground water (ie wells).
3. Water rights to ephemeral streams.
4. Water rights to year-round streams, creeks and rivers.
5. Mineral rights on the surface.
6. Mineral rights under the surface.
7. Grazing rights to the forage on the surface.
8. Development rights.
9. Surface estate rights (ie, you can do something on the surface of the land, including farm or ranch).
And so on. This is not an exhaustive list.
Easterners think that “you own the land you own it all.” Not so. This was true only in the original 13 colonies, and then not uniformly in all 13 states. In western states, split estate property rights are the rule, not the exception, and we don’t even survey our land in the same manner as the original 13 states and/or Texas.
Well ok then.
You accept a situation like that, you get a situation like that.
People have freedom of choice. I choose not to have abrogated property rights, “law of the west” notwithstanding.
They are? How do you know?
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