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Show 98 REPOST OF THE CJMXISGIONEB OF IlYDIAX AFFAIRS. MINERAL LEASES. A list of approved leases and a rAsum6 of the amendments to the regulations governing Creek and Cherokee mineral leases were given in my last report. The regulations were further revised on June 11, 1907. Three important modifications are: Instead of the requirement that a lessee show $5,000 cash on hand for the development of each lease, or $40,000 for the maximum acre- w, 4,800 acres, a lessee is required to be vouched for, on his applica-hen for a lease, by two officers of separate national banks, or by one national-bank officer and the manager of an oil well supply company, or by "some other commercial enterprise with which the applicant has had extensive business relations; " but the Department reserves the right to make further inquiry. at any time as to his standing and busin& ability. - On a gas well that tests in twenty-four hours 3,000,000 cubic feet or less the royalty is $150 per am~uma, nd, where the capacity exceeds that, $50 additional per annum for each 1,,000,000 cubic feet or fraction thereof; and except in emergencies, which m no case shall wnsume more than ten days,. a lessee is not allowed to utilize more than 75 per cent of the ca ac~tyof a gas well. The required 2 oms of leases are now printed by the Government and are sold by the United States Indian agent at $1 per set, so that now it is not nkoessary to examine the leaseias to subsxanee, but only to see tnat the blank spaces are properly filled. Up to the close of the last fiscal year 14,584 mineral lease, nearly all oil and gas, had been filed with the Union Agency, of which 9,575 have been forwarded for departmental consideration and 5,009 are pending at the agency; 14,423 covered oil and gas, 118 coal and asphalt, and the other 43 miscellaneous minerals; 4,886 leases, wver-ing about 663,000 acres, have been approved. Prior to the passage of the act of April 26, 1906 (34 Stat. L., 137), the Department had no jurisdiction of the approval of mineral leases in the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations; but under that act Che Department is required to approve all mineral leases entered into by full-blood citizens of those nations and also of the Seminole Nation. Previously, mineral leases in the Seminole Nation could be made with the tribal government with the consent of the allottee and the approvd of the Department, one half of the royalty to be paid to the tribal government until its expiration and the other half to the allottee. The tribal government of the Seminole Nation has not yet been extinguished, and the question as to whether it is entitled to one-half the royalty .accruing from minerals extracted from land allotted to citizens of less than full blood is pending before the Department. |
