The American Spectator

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Another Perspective

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The present leases are held by an eccentric collection of very small time players (called "bottom feeders" in the industry) whose motives are foggy. Exploration is expensive, success is not guaranteed, the potential rewards are minimal, The highly visible damage to the environment (from exploration alone) will last at least a lifetime.

These mineral rights leases can be traded for other federal leases and royalty rights. The government can make such trades highly profitable for individual holders. Governor Jeb Bush orchestrated such federal trades recently in Florida. Perhaps that option is the real reason for recent efforts by the Front's leaseholders.

In the case of the Front, the BLM legally can do little to actively develop energy resources. What it can choose to do is to not slow or stop present leaseholders from developing.

Montana's lone Republican Senator, Conrad Burns, is Chairman of the Interior Appropriations Committee that can slow the process of development. His actions can send a clear message to both the leaseholders and the BLM that bartering away present leases is better than developing. Burns can withhold or decrease moneys for necessary studies, or he can facilitate funds to buy back the leases. But Burns is a politician who is not so much careful as he is slow. To date he's sided with the ten or so leaseholders, but his wet thumb in the wind is telling him to lean with the environmentalists and the solid majority of Montanans who don't want a 250 mile stretch of the Rockies defaced for a few dozen temporary jobs. At this juncture, Senator Burns is the key figure.

That's how it stands.

I am reminded that R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.., wrote recently and inspiringly in these pages of locating America's sacred places. If the Rocky Mountain Front is not such a place, then, sorry, there is no God.

And if Senator Burns and the BLM fail to prevent natural gas mining along the Front, then, sorry, this conservative will succumb to the drug of wacko environmentalist activism.

I might even try a seven percent solution of patouli oil.

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Trade, Business, Environment, NATO, Energy, Oil