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Show LEGAL ASPECTS OF MINERAL RESOURCES EXPLOITATION 731 fessor Silliman issued a report which was unbelievably optimistic. His samples, it later turned out, contained kerosine imported from the East. The corporations, organized by Church and his associates and financed widely by eastern investors, failed to discover a single well capable of producing oil commercially, and the resulting scandal ruined Silliman's professional career. Other companies reported small findings during this period, and some refineries were organized to experiment with distilling local crude oil in the hope of finding a high-grade lubricant. These efforts were for the most part failures. Oil fever was revived in the mid-seventies when several wells were put down in Pico Canyon near Los Angeles. During the next 15 years much of the prospecting was for the first time on land in the public domain. Oil mining districts, similar to those in the early gold fields, were organized. In the early 1890's oil was discovered near Coa-linga, Fresno County, and in 1892 E. L. Doheny drilled the first successful well in Los Angeles. The famous "Blue Goose" was brought in in Coalinga in 1897. The Whittier and Ventura County fields were being exploited, and a new discovery was made in the famous well on Means Ranch near Bakersfield. Ise has summarized the oil development during the first years of the 20th century:230 Many of the iniquities of our national oil policy have been illustrated in California history. First, there was the tendency to over-production, where offset wells are necessary to protect holders of leases, regardless of the demands for oil, or the price at which it could be sold ... In the second place, there was the consumption of oil for low uses, particularly for fuel. In the third place, there was the constant struggle of independents against monopoly control. The Placer Laws. The legal aspects of oil mining on the public domain must begin with the Placer Act of 1870.231 Al- 230 Ise, supra note 228, at 91-92. 231 See Part 1, "The Placer Act of 1870." though it is unlikely that Congress had petroleum in mind when it enacted the Placer Act, the statute was broad enough to include oil: "all forms of deposit" except veins of quartz or other rock in place. There was early authority that the quoted phrase included anything recognized by the standard authorities as mineral.232 In 1883, Secretary of the Interior Teller, however, felt that whether the placer law applied to oil lands was "an undetermined question."233 The Department continued to assume tacitly that oil lands were locat-able.234 This position was abruptly changed in 1896 in the Union Oil Co. case235 in which the Secretary announced that land containing petroleum was not locatable as a placer mine. His legalistic, though "unscientific," analysis is worth preserving: It is true, scientifically speaking, that petroleum is a mineral. But the same may be said of salt and of phosphates, and of clay containing alumina, and other substances in the earth. Yet it does not follow that they come within the meaning of the mineral statutes ... It would seem as if oil was regarded by science as a mineral only because of its inorganic character, as a sort of distinction from a vegetable product. The Union Oil Co. case was later reversed by Acting Secretary Ryan who conceded the long standing policy of the Department, and felt that "the demands of simple justice would seem to require that there should be no departure from that construction at this late day . . ,"236 Despite the reversal, efforts to secure remedial legislation were already underway. Although two early bills were introduced by Senator White,237 the bill which really bore fruit was H.R. 9606, introduced by Representative Mondell, who, it will be remembered, 232 See, e.g., W. H. Hooper, 1 I.D. 560 (1881) . 233 Downey v. Rogers, 2 I.D. 707, 709 (1883) . 234 Roberts v. Jepson, 4 I.D. 60 (1885); Piru Oil Co., 26 I.D. 117 (1893). ^23 I.D. 222 (1896) . See also 24 I.D. 183 (1897) . 238 Union Oil Co., 25 I.D. 351 (1897) . 237 29 Cong. Rec. 395, 540 (1896). |