Drillers snag leases near Bears Ears monument

mfb99

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More proof that the "Annexation" of Bears Ears NM was driven by the Extraction Industry and their fanboy - Ryan Zinke

Pay particular attention to the price that the oil drillers pay for OUR Public lands - $3 - $91 per acre......

This article comes from the Guardian:

The Trump administration successfully sold off all available drilling plots in Utah, including areas near the original Bears Ears National Monument .

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) sold all 43 plots it made available during its online auction Tuesday bringing in more than $1.5 million in projected revenues. The more than 51,000 acres of land in Utah were snapped up by a handful of oil companies.

The revenue is a boost to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s push to raise more money off public land lease sales.


Plots sold during the auction include areas where conservation groups have protested potential drilling.

None of the lands that recently lost their monument status at Bears Ears were on the auction block, but the groups fear drilling is moving too close to the now smaller park. President Trump in December announced plans to shrink the size of Bears Ears and another national monument in Utah.

Land conservation group Center for Western Priorities (CWP) criticized the sales of land adjacent to the monument.

“The Trump administration’s all-out assault on America’s public lands was on full display this morning in southern Utah. In its rush to drill everywhere, the Interior Department handed out leases on the doorstep of three national monuments that protect our nation’s natural and cultural heritage,” CWP Deputy Director Greg Zimmerman said Tuesday in a statement.

“At this rate, Americans visiting national parks and monuments in Utah will soon be met by a pumpjack at every park entrance.”

Oil companies also grabbed plots where the National Park Service has raised concerns about drilling.


In October, the NPS superintendent who oversees Southeast Utah submitted a comment to BLM on the lease sales of 13 plots close to Hovenweep National Monument. The superintendent warned that drilling there could affect “air quality, dark night sky, scenic value, soundscapes and groundwater quality.” The closest plot is located 3 miles from the monument.

Those plots sold for between $3 and $91 an acre mostly to Ayers Energy LLC of Bedford, Texas.

The interest shown in the plot sales surprised industry experts and conservationists alike, who viewed the land in Utah as largely unappealing.

“I have noted several times that that area has always been low potential and difficult. It’s difficult geology and ever since the controversy since Bears Ears arose, I’ve been trying to find anybody who is interested in that area to understand it and I’ve been unsuccessful for the past two years,” said Kathleen Sgamma, president of energy group Western Energy Alliance.

Landon Newell, staff attorney at the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, said he was shocked by the number of bids for plots largely believed to hold little to no oil assets.

"It is somewhat surprising that each parcel offered received bids. This area does not have high energy development potential, including for oil and gas," he said. "In the past year and a half there have only been 7 or 8 oil and gas drilling applications received for all of San Juan County - the county where most of the parcels are located.

He also said the results raised questions about whether Interior's decision to roll back monument restrictioins on Bears Ears was motivated by drilling.
“The lease sale lends additional support for the belief that gaining access to oil and gas resources was a central motivation for rescinding Bears Ears,” Newell said.


Secretary Zinke has made it a goal to finance the department’s more than $12 billion backlog of upgrades through lease sales on public lands and waters.
In a press conference with reporters in February following the release of the White House budget, Zinke said "sovereignty should mean something, so we’re focusing on that."

"Our growth curve continues to be impressive. As this country focuses on energy dominance, we’ll see this budget request increase going into our parks, and schools," he said of taking advantage of drilling on public lands.

Call your Congressional leaders 202-224-3121

Cheers,

Mark

Ye Shall Be Free To Roam...
 
It won't be long til the Zinke and Trump supporters are here bashing you for this info even though it's no secret what their agenda is driven by. $$$$
 
This is a fishy one.... Ayers Energy LLC, isn't a registered corp in Texas (or WY... they give a WY address on some of the filings) and both it's address in Texas and in WY are random houses in residential areas. I queried our operator database and Ayers Energy LLC has never drilled a well. Either they are a buying company for another energy company, maybe Encana, Berry, etc. that wants to do some exploration without all the publicity or it's a conservation group that wants to hold the leases so the lands can't be drilled for the foreseeable future.
 
This is a fishy one.... Ayers Energy LLC, isn't a registered corp in Texas (or WY... they give a WY address on some of the filings) and both it's address in Texas and in WY are random houses in residential areas. I queried our operator database and Ayers Energy LLC has never drilled a well. Either they are a buying company for another energy company, maybe Encana, Berry, etc. that wants to do some exploration without all the publicity or it's a conservation group that wants to hold the leases so the lands can't be drilled for the foreseeable future.

Or they're speculators looking to flip leases for profit. Happens a lot in the industry, especially with the smaller players. WHen you can purchase leases cheaply, you buy a lot, just like getting APD's. You may not drill for years, but you've cleared the hurdles under a friendly administraton, which often times comes with less stringent wildlife stips or none at all, depending on the state office or the current mood of Interior.

Just like hte last offshore lease sale - the public gets bottom dollar for their asset while private industry realizes the profit.
 
Or they're speculators looking to flip leases for profit. Happens a lot in the industry, especially with the smaller players. WHen you can purchase leases cheaply, you buy a lot, just like getting APD's. You may not drill for years, but you've cleared the hurdles under a friendly administraton, which often times comes with less stringent wildlife stips or none at all, depending on the state office or the current mood of Interior.

Just like hte last offshore lease sale - the public gets bottom dollar for their asset while private industry realizes the profit.

True, although the other bidders are known entities in the industry. Wasatch, Contex, Kirkwood...

I do think the potential for development is a bit overblown, most of the wells in the area are dry holes (in fact I'm not seeing a single producer) and the remoteness makes development very unlikely given the current price of oil and gas. The first company I worked for had substantial federal leases in the Unitas and between 2008- and 2016 we had zero development as the economics didn't make sense.

I can't speak to uranium or coal.
 
True, although the other bidders are known entities in the industry. Wasatch, Contex, Kirkwood...

I do think the potential for development is a bit overblown, most of the wells in the area are dry holes (in fact I'm not seeing a single producer) and the remoteness makes development very unlikely given the current price of oil and gas. The first company I worked for had substantial federal leases in the Unitas and between 2008- and 2016 we had zero development as the economics didn't make sense.

I can't speak to uranium or coal.

Interesting & weird. Why go to such lengths to hide who you are?

We've seen similar efforts in MT along the Rocky Mountain Front related to state minerals. Little to no recoverable minerals, but a great way to rile up investors & quickly flip of leases.
 
I've done a fair amount of work in the oil industry and I've never seen a driller get a lease.

Perhaps it was a producer?


I would imagine if this was a high potential area, it would have seen some action when oil was at $100/bbl in 2011.
 
Interesting & weird. Why go to such lengths to hide who you are?

We've seen similar efforts in MT along the Rocky Mountain Front related to state minerals. Little to no recoverable minerals, but a great way to rile up investors & quickly flip of leases.

Would these be brand new leases up for bid or renewals?

Forgive my ingnorance/lack of wanting to look.
 
I'm really enjoying this demonstration of mixed messages, I don't know if some of you are really this ignorant or if you're just part of somebody's propaganda machine.

1. The land is being LEASED, not sold, the BLM (a public land manager) still owns the land and dictates how the leaser will use the land to include an environmental study having to be done before the leaser can begin any operations.
2. The land in question is NEAR the Bears Ears, not on it and I'm sure that the previously mentioned environmental study will address any impact on the monument and place restrictions on any potential operations.
3. With a minimal of research I found a list of bidders on the Utah BLM web site and it includes a Wyoming address for Ayers Energy LLC. If you bother to check that address on Google Maps you'll see that it's a business building in Cheyenne - not a random residential building.
ayers llc.jpg

Looking at the other businesses in that building I'd suspect that these guys are either a small time land speculator or maybe a front for an environmental group that is trying to tie up the land so that it can't be used by resource developers. Either way it doesn't matter since the goal is to make the BLM more profitable and regardless of why or who paid the lease the monies it's still cash in the Federal coffers.

I'm very amused though by the fact that the argument against state management of public lands is that the states can't be trusted while the Federal Government can be - so much for that argument. I suppose that the real problem is that we put a bad person in to the Presidency and if only we had put Hillary in office then we'd all live in nirvana.

My suggestion is to revisit this lease deal in a year or two and see how it's progressed rather than jumping to conclusions prematurely. I doubt if any kind of operations will be in existence and if there were any kind of effort to develop resources on the land I'd bet that the BLM environmental documents would require that the land be recovered after use and that operations could not impact the Bears Ears Monument.
 
Rammac, Ayers originally gave their agents home address in Texas to the BLM, that was amended to this building in Wyoming. It's almost certainly a straw buyer, although will be interesting to see to what ends.

If you look up the address with the WY secretary of state you will see that it is owned by Wyoming Registered Agent Services, which is a company whose expressed purpose is to provide addresses in WY for companies that want to create an LLC in the state without actually having property or an office in the state... so basically they are a company that allows you to create dummy corps in the state.

Every other bidder was a legitimate operator.

https://wyobiz.wy.gov/Business/Fili...107108012198203114104027227038035011027241205
 
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Rammac, Ayers originally gave their agents home address in Texas to the BLM, that was amended to this building in Wyoming. It's almost certainly a straw buyer, although will be interesting to see to what ends.

If you look up the address with the WY secretary of state you will see that it is owned by Wyoming Registered Agent Services, which is a company whose expressed purpose is to provide addresses in WY for companies that want to create an LLC in the state without actually having property or an office in the state... so basically they are a company that allows you to create dummy corps in the state.

Every other bidder was a legitimate operator.

https://wyobiz.wy.gov/Business/Fili...107108012198203114104027227038035011027241205

Excellent explanation and example of tone conducive to civil and meaningful discourse.
 
2. The land in question is NEAR the Bears Ears, not on it


Fair point Sir... although I would say only a small portion of the leases are on the originally designated monument

My apologies... for this hack georeferencing job... but it gives an idea of what we are taking about... BLM leases are hatched and the bear ears boundary is the orange dashed line. Don't worry about those on the western side by Canyon lands those are "Tar Sands" not leases.

2018-03-23_15-09-49.jpg
 

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