Posted on 11/02/2011 9:33:37 PM PDT by Space Patrol Hoppa
Two interrelated issues confront the taxpayers: The insolvency of the federal government and its seemingly never-ending barriers against the production and distribution of affordable energy.
The assertion that the United States has less than 5 percent of the world's population but consumes 26 percent of its energy fails to mention that the U.S. produces 26 percent of the world's industrial output. Another contrived assault against expanded domestic oil production is that the U.S. has only 3 percent of the world's oil reserves. This number is questionable, especially since the federal government either has made it illegal to explore for oil in order to expand our reserves or effectively has negated this prospect through over-regulation and targeted tax policies.
Consider the Green River Formation — containing the largest deposits of oil shale in the world — which covers parts of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. These deposits reportedly contain approximately 1 trillion barrels of recoverable oil... And more than 70 percent of these oil shale deposits are under federal-government-owned and -managed lands...
The highest percentage of the federal government's ownership of vast acreages is in the energy-rich Western states... Suppose ... that 10 percent of the 650 million acres — 65 million acres — would be offered for sale only to domestic energy companies. Of course, each parcel sold would need to be priced at its respective market value ... if these tracts were sold for an average of $1,500 per acre, the resulting revenue to repay our hemorrhaging national debt would be...
(Excerpt) Read more at 2.timesdispatch.com ...
We should lease, not sell those lands. The point being, the land should be developed as far as mineral resources.
Disagree. Put the land back into private hands.
The federal government shouldn't own any more land than it takes to erect the necessary buildings, military bases, and other infrastructure it takes to run a constitutional, limited government.
I'm also ok with the national park system for the most part (although I think they're far too extensive).
Welcome to Free Republic. Any comment on the article you posted?
I’m all for getting the government out of the west. They own WAY too much of the land. And, I have proposed exactly this to friends. They pointed out: how do you sell it without having China and Saudi Arabia buy up the American west? I’m not sure about that.
IBTZ? Drill Baby Drill!
BLM should be divided up and handed off to the states, both the lands and the personnel too. It would be up to the states to decide to either fund them or, not.
And, really, in my opinion the BLM lands themselves should be sold off to the public. Current leaseholders should be given first option to buy, and then they should be offered to the public at large. In one stroke the land returns to the states, and in a second stroke it all becomes taxable and available for development if it has any value for development.
The federal government has no business owning huge swaths of land across entire western states. Land for military bases and buildings for federal offices, sure. Millions of square miles of open land, no.
Thanks. I don’t know enough about the topic to comment intelligently. I’m here to learn.
An Academic who’s NOT a greenie weenie commie pinko earth worshiper! Who’d thunk it?
I don’t have an inherent problem with the government selling current gov’t land, but I don’t trust the government to conduct those sales in an open market fashion. In other words, I agree the gov’t should divest of much of the land it owns, which it never should have become the owner of in the first place. But now that it *does* own the land, I don’t trust it will be able to sell that land on any kind of equitable basis to other than some arbitrary crop of insiders. Our government simply and literally can’t help itself, it’s so corrupt.
An honest reply, and I can appreciate it. You'll learn a lot if you stick around FR, but don't discount what you already know. Your opinions are as valid as any other Freeper's.
You've got a point there, but the one upside to the federal government divesting itself of the millions of acres it 'owns', is that once it's returned to private hands (even insider hands), it will eventually be broken up and re-sold many times, thus putting it into the hands of the people, where it rightfully belongs.
I agree
I just sold the lease for my gas rights for 5 grand an acre to Shell.
I disagree; those are public lands and I would not want to see them bought up by private corporations or even individuals.
All BLM, Forest Service, and National Park lands belong to all of the PEOPLE of the United States for their USE and pleasure.
I do agree with getting rid of the stupid tangle of rules and regulations governing these lands; and they should all be open for mineral, timber and water exploitation. All of these things can and should be done with appropriate respect for the land and consideration for others using the land for other purposes; such as hunting, fishing,camping and just site site seeing. If the government were to sell these lands to private companies and individuals; trust me you would soon see a lot of signs going up that say the same thing as mine. “ PRIVATE PROPERTY-NO TRESPASSING-IF YOU DON’T HAVE AN INVITATION FROM THE PROPERTY OWNER OR A WARRANT TURN AROUND AND GET OUT”.
We the people just need to regulate the regulators; they work for us, not the other way around. We get to tell them what we want and expect them to deliver. They DON’T get to tell US what we can have from OUR public lands.
5 grand an acre. Wow! Yer rich!
The problem is that some state budgets would collapse under the expense load.
Take Nevada, for example. A huge proportion of the state is BLM lands, with another large portion USFS lands. Total federal control of land in Nevada is about 87% of the state. Let’s say you sell all those lands to the state of Nevada for a dollar an acre... and Nevada *still* can’t afford it. BTW, the fair market value for many of those lands is between $50 to $250/acre... I’m choosing a dollar an acre to make it absurdly cheap... and yet demonstrate how much money would be needed.
There’s another problem in this that most people from the east don’t understand, and that’s the “split estate.” Right now, the federal government leases out oil/gas rights, mineral rights, grazing rights, timber rights, etc. That’s a tidy source of income for Uncle Sugar. Uncle won’t want to give up that cash flow - but they must, in order for the states to have any chance of making the idea of transferring the lands over to the states.
The central problem here is that when the western states were admitted to the union post-civil war, the federal government said (in essence) “mark down what is private land, what is state land and we (the feds) get the rest.” Most western states didn’t reserve nearly enough lands to themselves.
When production starts...Then I'll be rich.
I'm getting a ice-class Trawler and circumnavigate the globe.
Only in Appalachia!
Very nice!!! I am happy for a FReeper brethren. Enjoy the heck out of your riches. Congrats
Spot on.
At 650 million acres, the federal government could give every man, woman, and child in the US their own private acre, and still have 350 MILLION ACRES of our sovereign soil firmly under THEIR control.
You're telling me that 350 million acres isn't enough park land for the citizens of this country? Do you have any concept of how much land even ONE million acres is?
Like everything else about our federal government, their land ownership is far out of proportion to what the Founders intended.
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