As a person that actively practices in this area, I can affirmatively answer that the Rock Springs RMP absolutely prevents energy development on 100s of thousands of private (largely checkerboard) and state lands (usually section 16 and 36 in every township) You can’t operate a gas project on private lands that are surrounded by federal lands on all sides if you can’t build pipelines across federal lands. You are wrong here.
Also - in horizontal drilling, economics usually only support projects with 2 mile laterals or longer. Our private and state lands are often 1 square mile. If we can’t drill through the adjacent federal lands, you can’t economically drill.
To be honest - I don’t know how someone says they support mineral revenues for schools at the same time saying they support the Rock Springs RMP and similar DOI actions. Wyoming gets 50% of the lease bonuses and royalties from federal land development. If you can’t develop (as in the Rock Springs RMP), that equals ZERO dollars.
So I think you’d help yourself if you’d pick a side. Are you for school funding or not? I am for public school funding. Those public school funds largely come from the mineral resources in this state and on federal lands.
Hell of a straw man you just beat up. Nice job.
Where did I say I supported the Rock Springs RMP. I didn't. I asked what he meant by locked out. I assumed he meant his ability to access the surface, since that was the context of our conversation, at least I thought.
Also, how much of that state and private land "can't be developed" because the state and private landowners don't own the mineral rights and don't have the right to force their will on lands that are owned by ALL Americans, not just the tiny tiny fraction of Americans who live in this state.
Kinda seems like your trying to take advantage of the fact that most people aren't landowners and therefor don't understand that surface ownership doesn't equal owning mineral rights and being able to do whatever you want with what's under the ground you own the surface of.
Where did I say I don't support money from mineral development going to our schools? That's right, I didn't. Here's a question for you. How much land is already leased in the Red Desert vs how much would be have been off limits to leasing?
Here's another question for you. Which President had the most domestic oil production of all time? Trump? Wrong...try Biden. But you knew that. Your just relying on the fact that your target audience in this straw man rant either don't know that or want to brush it under the rug cause it doesn't fit their world view.
On one point I was vague. When I said "federal lands are not our lands" I meant that federal lands are not the state of Wyomings lands like I thought he implied. Cause they're not. And again, surely you of all people understand that surface ownership doesn't have anything to do with who owns the mineral rights and who gets to decide how those are developed unless those surface owners are also the mineral right owners.
So if I wanted to drill on my land (hypothetically....I know I don't own the mineral rights), and the nearby federal land doesn't have a pipeline, cause it would be dumb as hell to put one there, should I stamp my feet and cry about it? Of course not. I can assure you that no one in their right mind wants a pipeline on the federal land I have easy access to. Right in a deer migration corridor, and the topography would be pretty damn limiting anyways, unless you wanted to build a pipeline that goes several thousand feet in elevation up a damn mountain in a pretty short horizontal distance.
If you want to talk about the finer points of where there should or shouldn't be a pipeline, we can have that conversation. We would probably agree on quite a few things. I can't stand the wasted natural gas that gets burned off cause it's not economical to get it to market, and I really can't stand the fact that zero royalties are paid on that wasted resource.
Does that mean we need to have pipelines everywhere someone wants to make a buck on mineral development? Should the fact that royalties help pay for our schools mean developers should able to develop wherever they want? Surely not. That's a nuanced discussion that will come down to values.
I'd prefer not to have new pipelines in critical wildlife habitat when we just broke a record for domestic oil production, under a Democrat no less. A energy exec that doesn't live in this state and doesn't give a rats ass about wildlife and wild places and wants to make another million is obviously going to feel differently.
www.energyindepth.org
