Posted on 04/18/2014 10:33:54 AM PDT by Jim Robinson
About 80 people showed up at a meeting in Aspen on Thursday on whether the BLM should void 65 oil and gas leases in the region, including 25 in the Thompson Divide area.
Two-thirds of the way through the meeting in the basement of the Pitkin County Library, every person who had spoke urged the 13 BLM officials in attendance to cancel the leases, which were first authorized in a 1993 environmental impact statement.
“We’re very much in favor of voiding the leases, specifically within the Thompson Divide area,” said Rob Ittner, the chair of the Pitkin County Board of County Commissioners.
Ittner said all five county commissioners strongly agreed that the Thompson Divide area “needs to be protected.”
The Thompson Divide area gets its names from Thompson and Divide creeks and is defined by conservation organizations such as Wilderness Workshop and the Thompson Divide Coalition as including 221,500 acres of land, including 88,100 acres in Pitkin County.
The meeting was a formal scoping meeting for the BLM, which is preparing an environmental impact statement on the leases to correct a mistake made under the National Environmental Policy Act when the leases were first approved by the BLM.
The leases are all on Forest Service land, mainly in an arc between Carbondale and DeBeque, and were designated by the agency as appropriate for leasing in the last two management plans for the White River National Forest. The BLM manages the mineral rights under the Forest Service land and so also manages the leases.
The EIS is not looking at the issue of future leases being created by the BLM, only the 65 existing leases in question. Of the 25 leases in the Thompson Divide area, seven are held by Ursa Resources and 18 are held by SG Interests.
(Excerpt) Read more at aspendailynews.com ...
So before you point your finger at other people..............
BTW, exactly how much of NJ's power is nukes? Is anybody up there glowing in the dark?
I’m actually not from NJ.
I’m from one of those gulf states that allows offshore drilling. I note that Colorado people are perfectly happy to fill their gas tanks with gas refined on the gulf coast. How many refineries are there in Colorado? What is Colorado’s refining capacity?
Any of those planes that fly the elites in and out of CO use any jet fuel refined on the Gulf Coast?
NIMBY’s should freeze in the dark.
‘.’
It doesn’t take long, using Google, to see that Colorado is producing the most oil since 1957, close to 50 million barrels per year.
But how much does Colorado use?
Do you refine any there? Or do you pollute some Gulf state with that process?
What about nat gas use?
How, precisely, do Coloradans stay warm in the winter? And presumably light their homes? Where does that energy come from?
I didn’t take you to raise. Look up that other stuff yourself, then report back to me.
I’m guessing the answer is none.
Hey, maybe those tourists won’t mind staying in dark, cold hotels.
It might be enlightening to know how many of the negative speakers were actually FROM colorado. And equally enlightening to know how many were in the pay (or had spouses in the pay) of radical environmental organizations or plain old foreign governments...
But hey, your tourists won’t want to be warm or have lights in their hotel rooms. Or fill up their cars. So best of luck to you!
NIMBY.
Ya know, the alternative is not to buy out the leases but to buy out the emos. Kelo their arses.
Is that a little more like it?
That would be his goal.
If the original EIS was found to be ‘in error’, then, the BLM can work it anyway they choose. With such options, they WILL heavily weigh public opinion via hearings.
The decision to withdraw and void a lease is not without economic impact on the lessee oil company. Even so, the real problem is getting adequate compensation from the government for cost and expense incurred by the lessee oil company. The bonus per acre paid the government with a winning bid is easily identified, however, there will be ‘arguments’ and ‘delays’ when considering technical and administrative expenditures that are ‘reasonable’ in the judgement of the government. For the sake of time and
expense, most will ‘settle’ early and in the accounting world, lose money. Even though you are issued a valid lease giving authority to explore for and drill for oil and gas and subsequent to the issue you conduct costly technical operations to further confirm and justify your decision to drill, you may lose it all when the lease is withdrawn. It has become difficult to conduct business with reliance on contracts, agreements between two parties to accomplish an act. When agreements mean nothing........is there anybody out there?
BeGood....Ross
Indeed... given the BLM not giving a rat about speech, this is all government staged bull crap for land grab excuse, imo.
These were Obama people talking to Obama employees... sheesh. What an echo chamber of show trial.
You were wrong when you posted that states don’t make money from offshore oil drilling. Congress passed the Outer Continental Shelf Act in 1953, which recognized state ownership of the seabed within 3 nautical miles of the shore. State owned oil fields offshore produce 37,400 barrels of oil a day in California.
If I am not mistaken, Texas claims the seabed out to the 12-mile limit. Having originally entered the union as an independent entity, the state retained the international 12-mile limit.
As for the state waters, the Florida gulf coast and the Texas coast has the exception and you see different numbers on that. The most credible sources I've seen say that they get 3 leagues or about 10 miles. Maybe someone can clear that up.
CA allowed drilling in both state and federal waters but ended it in '65, except those that were grandfathered. LA has drilled out their state waters. MS and AL never allowed drilling in state waters. Alaska allows drilling in state water but their price is so high, nobody does. I don't know about Texas.
There is also an exception to what I said with Royalty Sharing. TX, LA, MS, and AL were given federal royalty sharing in Area 181 in GOMESA 2006. The shared royalty could be used for coastal mitigation and hurricane protection.
Virginia said that they would allow drilling in federal waters if they were given royalty sharing, but they wanted to use the shared royalty for roads, and that has not been approved by Congress.
As for the Submerged land Act, there were others parts to that that you don't mention. Because the offshore drilling in state waters benefitted only the coastal state, the interior states said know. Eisenhower proposed subsequent funding acts to benefit all the states and that was agreed to. The first of those was the Land And Water Conservation Fund(1965) and in the 70s the funding acts for urban parks and historical sights. All three are funded by offshore royalties. The Land and Water Conservation fund is where BLM or the Forest service gets the money to buy more land. The act specifies that a minimum of 60% of those funds go to buying more land. Eisenhower said that these would be funded only when the treasury was flush, but since 2000, all three have been funded 100%. Also under Royalty Sharing, a portion of the shared royalty flows directly into the fund, bypassing Congress and the appropriation process.
There was also a companion act to the Submerged Land Act, called the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act. This act contains the language the requires the feds to consult with the state before drilling off shore to the state. Which means the feds have to get the OK from the state. Also in the act Congress delegated authority to the Sec Interior to manage the OCS, and since the prez hires and fires the Secretary, this is the basis of the prez's authority over offshore drilling.
The Feds are talking revenue sharing with the states too.
Looks like the lunatics were forearmed and well organized.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.