This Land is Your Land

Whose pot is that over there? Pothole Point, Utah

Here is how it works.  The men working for the oil and gas companies sit around their offices and conference rooms pouring over maps of your land. They’ve been carefully mapping your land for a long time now, with the help of your hired hand and your money.  After studying the maps of your land and wandering around on it, without your permission, they decide how much of its mineral and drilling rights they want to own.

Then they go to your hired man, the BLM, and tell him which parcels of your land they want to drill on. Like a loyal lap dog, the BLM obsequiously obliges and holds an auction so the oil company can buy your drilling rights. Usually, you don’t even know about the auction, which is a real auction with an auctioneer and a room full of men —  it’s always men —  with little paddles they raise when they want to bid.  And they do want to bid, because the prices for your rights are laughably low.  By any rational economic measure, the prices are so low they are fraudulent.  The hired help is really just giving away your drilling rights.

Oh yes, one other detail.  If you have the temerity to go to the auction and bid for your own rights, the BLM and the oil men will call the cops to escort you from the auction, accuse you of a crime, and try to get you indicted.  At best, you are confronted with huge legal expenses and, at worst, a federal judge who used to lawyer for the oil companies and who was appointed by the former oil man in the White House, will throw you in a federal prison.

Really.  The hired help is giving away the mineral and drilling rights to your land and, demanding that you go to jail if you try to stop them. Today’s Washington Post has the full story.

Reminds us of Woody Guthrie:

This land is your land,
This land is my land,
From California to the New York Island
From the redwood forests to the gulf stream waters
This land belongs to you and me.

In the squares of the city – In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office – I see my people
And some are grumblin’ and some are wonderin’
If this land’s still made for you and me.

This land is your land,
This land is my land,
From California to the New York Island
From the redwood forests to the gulf stream waters
This land belongs to you and me.
_____________________
The college student who bid on these drilling rights apparently upset a lot of people.  The New York Times covered the story the next day.

Here is a web site collecting small donations so the college student has the money to pay for the rights he bought.  Already the site has collected enough for the first payment due.

For more detail, see this post at the Fat Finch.

Here is the BLM site containing some of the maps you’ve paid for to help out the struggling oil companies.

UPDATE – JANUARY 20, 2009

A federal judge last week, temporarily stopped the entire sale.  The BLM, which would have deposited the checks from the sale yesterday and made the sale final and binding, was restrained from depositing the checks until it redoes its Environmental Impact Statement.  Given the change in presidential administrations today, there is some chance the sale will never happen.  What that will mean for the young college student threatened with prosecution remains to be seen.

Tags: BLM Oil and Gas auctions, Bureau of Land Management, drilling, Fraud, Utah, Woodie Guthrie