I realize that this bill is popular in Alaska. The bill is nothing more than voting yourself someone else's property. If the residents of Alaska want to own mineral rights, they should purchase them.
The US government should auction mineral rights instead of this terrible leasing arrangement. The wireless spectrum has been auctioned creating property rights. The mineral rights in federal areas should be auctioned also.
“I realize that this bill is popular in Alaska. The bill is nothing more than voting yourself someone else’s property. If the residents of Alaska want to own mineral rights, they should purchase them. “
WHAT??? Am I missing something here? when you say that the Fed. Govt. should auction the rights off, that sounds like more federal control and take-over, which we do NOT need.
Seems to me that states should indeed own what they (already) have.
Sorry, but it is owned by the State, not the Fed.
“The US government should auction mineral rights instead of this terrible leasing arrangement.”
The thing that’s better about leasing rather than auctioning is that when oil companies lease, they do so based on their preliminary studies and “guesses”, if you will, of what’s beneath the ground. But they don’t know absolutely until they later do more in-depth (pardon the pun) probing, and often-times, they find the oil’s not there - this is what the idiot Dems/Pilosi and Reid don’t get. So, leasing makes sense, because oil companies have ample time to discover and bring resources out of the ground if they’re there, but if not, the lease ends at a specific time and they’re no longer stuck with it.
With “auctioning”, you bought it, you own it - tough luck if oil isn’t found to be there.