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A Guy Named Craig May Soon Have Control over a Large Swath of Utah
- ggm 6y agoMay have control... Over mineral exploration licences. And.. it looks like guys like Craig bid in to prevent exploration by determining not to explore. So they are bidding to preserve federal land against the predations of exploration in a time of declining markets for oil and gas
- opportune 6y agoHe never stated his motivations so it’s impossible to tell what he wants to do. Also neither in the article nor any of the links could I find information regarding the actual size of the land to be leased. 100 acres? 10,000? Who knows
- chasd00 6y agoI'd be surprised if it was less than 100k acres. If you haven't been in that part of the US the scale of nothingness is hard to put in words.
- nihilist_t21 6y agoHere's a link from the BLM's website about the sale, which is to take place September 2020: https://eplanning.blm.gov/eplanning-ui/project/2000028/510 https://eplanning.blm.gov/eplanning-ui/project/2000028/510
- martey 6y agoI don't think this is a correct reading of the article. Craig Larson is the owner of Prairie Hills Oil & Gas. Nothing in the article suggests that he nominated the land in order to prevent oil and gas exploration. I think you are confusing Larson with Terry Tempest Williams, who is mentioned later in the article as trying to lease land in order to prevent it from being leased by oil and gas companies. The article doesn't suggest that Williams and her husband plan to bid on rights in the upcoming auction, so it seems likely that Larson (or another oil and gas company) will win that auction.
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoIn particular, Larsen is the one who nominated the land for being able to be leased. If he wanted to protect the land from being leased, the obvious way to do so was to simply not nominate it, so it wouldn't be up for auction, so nobody could bid on it. The fact that he nominated it at all means that he wants to bid on it. (I should say it means he means to bid on at least some of it. I could see wanting to bid on something specific, and nominating much more than that, so that anybody who wants to swipe the piece you're interested in doesn't know which piece to bid on.)
- ggm 6y agoI think you are confusing Larson with Terry Tempest Williams, who is mentioned later in the article as trying to lease land in order to prevent it from being leased by oil and gas companies Yes. That's precisely my mistake. Thanks for the correction.
- ConsiderCrying 6y agoThis seems like such a preposterous idea to me. You can buy an acre of land for $2 and just... just own it? I don't mean land ownership in general but rather a situation like this. So some company can just buy up the prairie and then anyone who'd want to use this for something productive (personally wouldn't consider drilling for oil productive) has to go and deal with them. That seems a bit backward, I'd rather see that land in the hands of Native Americans or, since the other option is a pipe dream, controlled by the government.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jeffdavis 6y agoIt's a lease: "The lease has a term of ten years, and, after the gavel comes down, the annual rental fee per acre would be a dollar and a half for the first five years, and two dollars for the second."
- hanniabu 6y agoThat's so ridiculously insanely cheap....is the land really that worthless?
- rurban 6y agoWell, it's one of the most famous places in the world, with tons of tourists every year. But when you start destroying this, it's worthless for sure.
- jeffdavis 6y agoCan you elaborate? What does the map look like, where do the tourists go, and what part of it will be defiled with oil & gas development? You might be right. But based on the information in the article, it might also be true that tourists don't ever notice that any of this happened.
- 6y ago
- jtbayly 6y agoWhy assume oil? Isn't it more likely, given the oil economics right now, that it is gold, or something else?
- yellowapple 6y agoGiven that the "Guy Named Craig" owns a company specifically around oil and gas extraction, one of those two seems probable unless someone outbids him.
- martey 6y agoThe leases mentioned in the article as specifically for oil and gas development as are handled by the "National Fluids Lease Sale System": https://nflss.blm.gov/ https://nflss.blm.gov/ Mining gold on federal lands seems to go through a different (and easier) process (involving staking a mining claim as opposed to nominating land and then bidding on it in an auction): https://www.blm.gov/programs/energy-and-minerals/mining-and-minerals/locatable-minerals/mining-claims/staking-a-claim https://www.blm.gov/programs/energy-and-minerals/mining-and-...
- billiam 6y agoYes! I worked in precious metals exploration and the staking process seemed kinda crazy to me---racing up and down the hills in prospective areas, carrying the paperwork and bottles to put it them in (you can't use regular glass because the sun will eventually set the paper on fire). Guess it still is, at least in some states.
- Jtsummers 6y agoGiven low (present) oil demand, if you have capital now might be a good time to try and gain access to potential oil reserves for when the demand is restored (which will happen as nations start opening up more, especially for travel). Oil demand may even see a boost as travel reopens. Airlines may have to reduce passenger capacity to maintain social distancing rules (legal or just customer demand), potentially increasing the total number of flights along various routes. And more people will probably be traveling by car than by air for domestic/regional travel, which (in aggregate) would be less fuel efficient than mass transit.
- jeffdavis 6y agoThe title makes it sound like an individual will get control of a couple percent of the land in Utah. Reading the article, it seems more like an oil & gas company is purchasing (EDIT: leasing) some land in Utah, and the article doesn't even make it clear how much (unless I missed it). How is this really different from what we already know? There's a lot of cheap land out there, the country is big, and the federal government makes various kinds of deals with people who want to develop it. The article says that it's $2 an acre, which sounds like little, but it doesn't provide a point of comparison.
- Ajedi32 6y agoPer the article they're not even purchasing the land, just bidding on a 10-year lease.
- metrokoi 6y agoNot even a lease on the land, a lease on the mineral rights!
- xenocyon 6y ago> How is this really different from what we already know? I actually didn't know that public land could pass into private ownership so easily. As it says in the article: "The law itself is the crime — a gift to the oil and gas businesses."
- cortesoft 6y agoIt isn't passing into private ownership, though. It is for a 10 year lease on the mineral rights; you still need to make a separate deal to get access through the surface to get to the minerals.
- jeffdavis 6y agoAs someone else pointed out, it's not ownership, it's a 10-year lease. This all sounds pretty routine; "a feature, not a bug", designed to promote economic development and be accommodating in general. If you don't like development in general, or Oil & Gas development in particular, you won't be happy with this arrangement. But I would think there would be more outrageous examples than this one.
- sneeuwpopsneeuw 6y agoWell there is probably more to the story then just this. For example there are places in France where you can buy a house and a small piece of land for 1 euro. While this may sound strange the reason the government does this is because those houses where left abandoned. So when you buy it you sign a contract with special rules that say that you need to refurbish it or rebuild it within a few years.
- eximius 6y agoSource? I'd be willing to fix up house in Europe.
- dirkt 6y agoGoogling "france acheter maison 1 eur" find for example this: https://www.18h39.fr/articles/maison-a-1-euro-vraiment-une-bonne-affaire.html https://www.18h39.fr/articles/maison-a-1-euro-vraiment-une-b...) (use Google Translate etc.)
- J_cst 6y agoThe above Is true also in Italy. Google "Italia case ad un euro".
- nihilist_t21 6y agoHey cool! Something I have first hand experience with as an oil and gas accountant. The Federal Government, as you can imagine, controls vast amounts of mineral acreage and the nomination process is how these plots of mineral rights are brought up to auction. The auctions used to be done in person, but now they are done online at www.energynet.com. Federal Oil and Gas leases are all standardized. Like the article states, the term is for 10 years. You pay an initial bonus consideration payment up front (whose price is determined by auction), and then afterwards you pay an annual rental payment. Any production on a Federal lease is subject to a 12.5% royalty rate, which generally is very cheap compared to a lease from a private mineral owner. The article doesn't make the distinction very clear, but this is for the leasing of the mineral rights only; surface rights are separate and distinct and might not even be owned by the Federal Government. If a well was to be drilled, there would be a separate surface use agreement between the oil and gas company and the surface owner. If anyone has any questions about the general process of Federal leasing I can try to answer them as best as I can!
- cddotdotslash 6y agoVery interesting! How does this work from an average citizen's perspective? If I had a spare $10k, could I simply go bid on some parcels, and (assuming I won the auction), simply let it sit for 10 years, thereby denying other companies the ability to exploit it?
- nihilist_t21 6y agoYes you could! These lease sales can get quite expensive if they're worth anything to oil and gas companies. My company has been party to auctions for clients that have stretched into seven figures alone. Other times, many leases don't see a single bid and you could snatch up acreage for next to nothing. EDIT: As the article and some Google searching shows, apparently the BLM can deny a lease on the basis of lack of intent to drill (or at least they are trying). I did not know this was something they could attempt and I stand (potentially) corrected. A major effort to raise money to tie up Federal minerals would likely create enough noise to where the BLM might try to deny leases.
- pg_bot 6y agoThe federal government owns a ton of land in the west when compared to the rest of the United States. The federal government owns 64.9% of Utah, but owns 0.3% of New York, 4.4% of South Carolina, and 13.2% of Florida.[0] We should auction off more land in the west, instead of leasing it. [0] https://ballotpedia.org/Federal_land_ownership_by_state https://ballotpedia.org/Federal_land_ownership_by_state
- Miner49er 6y agoI'm not sure why that's wanted? If the goal is to equalize the amount of land owned by the federal government in each state, why not do the opposite and have the government gain control of more land in the east?
- driverdan 6y agoWho said that was the goal? That doesn't make any sense. It would cost billions to buy up land on the east coast and only inflate the value of the remaining land. Outside of monuments and parks most of the land the gov owns in western states is undesirable. You can already buy very cheap land in the middle of nowhere UT, NM, NV, and AZ. The market for off grid desert land with no water is small.
- jeffbee 6y agoPretty hard. The feds can’t just gain property. They have it in the west by having reserved it in the first place. That is, federal land in the west never belonged to the state. Now what we should have done over the last twenty years is just buy Canada. It works have only cost a few trillion dollars (non-urban areas only) and would have radically expanded federal holdings.
- gonational 6y agoSome guy Craig may soon have a 10 year mineral rights lease on some small lot in Utah… The author of this ad “is a founder of the grassroots climate campaign”, doesn’t even mention the size of this “large swath”, so I’m left to wonder if it is even similar in size to the 1,100 acre example he gives, which itself would be 0.002% of Utah; that’s not a large swath. I have multiple friends with larger farms than this in a single town. If I stake a claim to pan for gold in Montana, I wonder if he will write an article about me.
- henriquez 6y agoIf this happens I do hope he includes another riveting interview where you say "no comment" several different ways.
- _red 6y agoFurther, the author wants us to be outraged of "how entirely simple and legal this is". However, why should the Federal government get this land at all? We used to have allodial title many years ago...but then it became common-law precedent that we effectively "rent" our land from the government and pay perpetual property taxes for that right. The lack of allodial title is what ultimately creates an inescapable "head tax" on every citizen.
- egypturnash 6y agoUnless “we” are the people who were here before the Europeans came in looking for plunder and land, why should “we” lay claim to it at all?
- lazylizard 6y agoHow far back do we go? First humans were african? Earth is theirs?
- zaroth 6y agoIt’s like a weird kind of long-form submarine campaign ad with a click bait title.
- monadic2 6y agoGotta raise those royalty rates!
- ryanmarsh 6y agoSpent a few minutes trying to figure out why Black Lives Matter owned so much of Utah...
- tengbretson 6y agoAn unknown amount of otherwise unwanted land is being leased by Craig for what is, at this point, an unknown reason? Neat.
- CREwert 6y agoAlas! Its a different Craig.
- hackissimo123 6y agoAm I the only one who read the headline and thought this was going to be something about Craigslist?