[CedarDave]

Chiropolos said another 10,000 oil and gas wells could spell the end of the ranching industry in the area.

With respect to ranching, the area is generally a wasteland anyway due overgrazing, mainly by Navajo sheep (where the number of livestock gives one status) and due to the multi-year drought. The main problem is that the individual Navajo's and ranchers don't often hold the mineral rights so they don't get a share of the royalty payments. If they did, they'd very likely be singing another tune.

[CedarDave]

PING to your lists, please. Texas added to topics to inform oil and gas types in that state.

[CedarDave]

Part 1 here:
Coalition Fights Drill Plan (NM, here we go again!)

And yet an earlier one here:
Richardson To Protect Otero Mesa (NM, to prevent oil and gas drilling)

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

***the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., the groups argued that the BLM's decision harms the ranching economy, the region's air quality and Native American cultural sites. ***

This is bunk. For years the Four Corners Power plant belched flue gas full of fly ash without any electrostatic precipitators to stop the ash.
While I lived in that area you could look to the west and know where their power plants were from the location of the smoke.

The San Juan Power plants just to the North did not have that problem.

If you are in the area in the spring you might see one of the dust storms that blow through the area. So much of Arizona blows over the town that it is jokingly refered to as Farmington, Arizona.

[Paleo Conservative]

The main problem is that the individual Navajo's and ranchers don't often hold the mineral rights so they don't get a share of the royalty payments. If they did, they'd very likely be singing another tune.

That's similar to Mexico where the federal government owns all mineral rights. I'm sure glad the first bill proposed for the annexation of Texas did not pass. It would have given most public lands to the federal government. Fortunately the second bill let Texas which had never been a US territory prior to statehood all public lands. The few national parks in Texas were actually either donated to the or bought by the federal government.

[farmfriend]

Rights, farms, environment ping.
Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this list.
I don't get offended if you want to be removed.

[farmfriend]

Amazing how the ranchers want the government out of their back pocket until something happens they don't like then they want the government to step in just like the enviros.