Is the government against you?

Recently I attended a meeting with the Bureau of Land Management on a proposed drill site in Fremont County.

The proposed unit and resulting test well have been in the planning stage for many years and hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent to date with the preliminary work, scientific interpretation, leasing federal minerals, state minerals, and private minerals.

Now they need a drill permit.

It was clear the BLM was never going to issue the permit. At the end of the meeting I did ask the BLM officials if they could simply, at the start of this expensive process, tell the company applying for the permits that their permits will never be issued. This would save the company the expense of their limited resources and let them go to a jurisdiction that supports mineral development. Here, in Wyoming, the federal government was against them.

This reminds me of a quote from the famous “De Re Metallica.” It is the scientific document that directed exploration, development and extraction of natural resources around the world for more than 300 years. It resulted in the largest increase in our human standard of living in history. The quote:

“The ‘operator’ should not start … operations in a district which is oppressed by a tyrant, but should carefully consider if the overlord there be friendly or inimical.”

- Georgious Agricola, 1556, De Re Metallica

Of course nothing has changed. Is the federal overlord “friendly” or “with you”, or is the government “inimical” or “against you”?

I have worked in Wyoming as well as on all continents, but Antarctica over the last 40 years. Increasingly our federal government has become more and more against us. Why does it take twice as long to get a mining permit on federally-controlled land as it took to win World War II? Is that a government with you or against you?

For those of you not working in the minerals industry you may ask, “so what, how does this affect me?”

In Wyoming we tax minerals. Mineral revenue supports our education system, public safety, the community colleges, the university, all of our social programs, the Wyoming Dept. of Health, state employees and so much more.

If we do not have mineral development we will need a replacement tax or a decrease in services. While our current downturn is partly due to prices, lack of turning on new resource development will not allow a recovery of our economy. A prime example is our coal industry - is the government with coal development or against coal development? The answer is clear.

On diversifying our economy away from minerals, please tell us what new taxes you propose, or what current taxes you would increase, to pay for the government we have? Chances are that those industries will not pay taxes.