'An Absolute Crime'

Feds, States Battle Over Mining Money

By Richard Martin, 2-08-08

Setting up a face-off with the White House, Sen. Ken Salazar said this week that along with two other members of the Colorado congressional delegation, he isi sponsoring a bill to restore the traditional 50-50 split between the states and the federal government of mineral leasing revenues on federal land.

The division was changed to 52-48 (in favor of the feds) in a little-noticed provision in the $555 billion appropriations bill signed by President Bush in December. Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal, whose state stands to lose dozens of millions in mineral royalties, has called the change “an absolute crime.”

Earlier this week the Bush Administration said it would attempt to make the takeaway, currently slated to expire at the end of this year, permanent.

Salazar, who actually voted for the catch-all appropriations bill that included the shift last fall, said tjat all states should receive their “fair share” of the revenues, which are climbing as the oil and gas boom in the Rockies accelerates.

“Colorado’s federal mineral leasing revenues, derived from extraction activities on federal lands in the state, are projected to grow upward of $226 million a year by 2012,” reports the Grand Junction Sentinel.

A bipartisan group of 16 members of congress, hailing from nine mostly Western states, sent Bush a letter last week demanding that the half-and-half arrangement be restored. The federal government, they said, has no business “taking money that is rightfully owed our states in order to pay for more federal bureaucracy.”

In other energy news:

-- Coloradans investing in solar power systems for their homes will now see part of the cost defrayed by the state government. “A recent pilot program launched by Governor Bill Ritter could mean the dawn of a new movement toward solar energy in Colorado,” reports the Colorado Daily, by offering $1 million in rebates for some qualifying homeowners, starting this spring. Half a million of that is coming from the state and the other $500,000 from private companies and non-profits.

-- Natural gas can be transported by pipeline, or, supercooled to liquid form, in tankers or train cars. The latter is likely to bring huge quantities of liquid natural gas to America’s shores in the next 10 years, from troubled countries like Indonesia, Algeria, and Russia, as domestic production does not keep up with demand. Trying to fill that gap, “Rockies Express Pipeline LLC said Monday it began service on the REX-West portion of its huge natural gas pipeline,” reports Reuters, a section that will pump about 1.4 billion cubic feet per day of gas from the Cheyenne Hub in Weld County, Colorado, to markets in the Midwest and the gas-thirsty Northeast.

-- King coal, meanwhile, continues to rule across the Mountain West. “After a brief lull, Colorado’s coal production posted its third-best year in 2007, slightly behind the highs of 2004 but ranking No. 7 among coal-producing states in the nation,” reports The Rocky Mountain News. With two new mines scheduled to open in 2008, coal production will likely continue to climb to 37.3 million tons.

Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.