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Show LEGAL ASPECTS OF MINERAL RESOURCES EXPLOITATION 739 Although this is only of historical interest now, it is worth noting in some detail because it was the principal factor in the failure of Congress to adopt a leasing system for 10 years. Petitions for relief for the California operators were constantly the stumbling block to legislation.289 Confident that the courts would declare the withdrawal unconstitutional, many oil companies continued prospecting or drilling on withdrawn land on which no discovery had been made before September 1909. The California oil interests convinced the Senate committee considering the Pickett bill to insert a savings clause protecting bona fide operators who were in diligent prosecution of work leading to a discovery at the date of any prior or any future withdrawal.290 There was no agreement as to what type of activities were contemplated by this provision. But what is more important, the act expressly refused to make any pronouncement about prospecting activities initiated after the 1909 withdrawal.291 When President Taft, after the enactment of the statute, reconfirmed his earlier order on July 2, 1910, and withdrew approximately the same land, the legal rights of occupants whose activities began after 1909 were thrown into utter confusion. If they were to be judged as of the date of the second withdrawal order, they would seem to be protected by the Pickett Act. Although this conclusion might conceivably be unfair to companies that had 289 The best account of efforts to obtain relief legislation will be found in White, supra note 229, at 439-59. The account in the text is indebted to Mr. White's material. Relief legislation is also discussed in Ise, supra note 228, at 309-23 (1926). 200 Section 2 provides: "That the rights of any person who, at the date of any order of withdrawal, is a bona fide occupant or claimant of oil or gas bearing lands and who, at such date, is in the diligent prosecution of work leading to the discovery of oil or gas, shall not be affected or impaired by such order so long as such occupant or claimant shall continue in diligent prosecution of said work ..." 291 See note 279, supra. observed the original order, still it cannot be emphasized too much that there was a real, honest division of opinion on the constitutionality of the withdrawal order. As has been observed, even the President had grave reservations. To complicate the picture somewhat, the Interior Department had announced in 1909 that companies which had purchased claims on which there had been no discovery at the time could not obtain patents even though oil was later found.292 The oil companies managed, without too much difficulty, to get Congress to reverse this ruling in the Assignments Act of 1911.293 Further problems arose when the Interior Department announced that it intended to "recapture" land which had been patented to the Southern Pacific Railroad under its land grant and which later turned out to be valuable for petroleum. Much of this land, located in the withdrawn fields in California, had been purchased by the oil companies. Later, in 1912, the President withdrew the two naval reserves in California previously mentioned. Most of the land in these areas had already been patented to the railroad. Other patents were based on "dummy" locations and were subject to possible cancellation for fraud. In 1913, the government instituted several suits to recover these patented lands and for an accounting for oil produced and sold illegally.294 The indication was that the Pickett Act was going to be construed strictly as affording no protection to producers commencing prospecting after September 1909, but before the second withdrawal in 1910. As a result, refineries were reluctant to purchase crude oil from these producers because they too might be accountable to the government. If they could not secure relief from the producers, the purchasers would pay for their oil twice. The government 292 H. H. Yard, 38 I.D. 59 (1909) . ^SSStat. 1015 (1911). 294 Ise, supra note 228, at 320. |