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Show LEGAL ASPECTS OF MINERAL RESOURCES EXPLOITATION 759 Department's extensive withdrawals of public lands. Withdrawals for wildlife refuges particularly have been considerable. Many withdrawals were under the independent power of the Executive and have the effect of removing the land from location or leasing. The congressional reaction to withdrawals for defense purposes led to legislation in 1958.421 Reminiscent of the restrictions placed on Executive withdrawals for timber reservations during the Theodore Roosevelt administration, the statute provides (with certain exceptions) that no withdrawal from settlement, location, sale, or entry of more than 5,000 acres of the public lands for any one defense project shall be valid except by act of Congress. The last section of the act states that all previous and future withdrawals (except the naval, oil, oil shale, and coal reserves) for the use of the Defense Department shall be deemed to be subject to the condition that all minerals, including oil and gas, in such lands shall be under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of the Interior. Such minerals shall not be explored for or disposed of except under the applicable public land mining and mineral leasing laws. Exploitation for minerals will not be allowed, however, where the Secretary of Defense, after consulting with the Secretary of the Interior, determines that mineral development or exploration would be inconsistent with the military use of the lands withdrawn or reserved. Shale Oil. In recent mining history, nothing has caused as much excitement in the oil industry as the commercial potential of the vast oil shale deposits in the Green River Formation in Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming. There seems to be little question at the present time that oil can be produced from the shale in the near future at a cost which will be competitive with the 42172 Stat. 27 (1958), 43 U.S.C. § § 155-58 (1964). ordinary production of crude oil from liquid reservoirs.422 Whether the known oil shale deposits owned by the Federal government should be turned over to private oil companies for exploitation is a matter which has generated considerable debate. Even if this question receives an affirmative answer, there is no agreement on the conditions which should be attached by the government or the benefits which should be accorded the industry for making an investment of this magnitude. Since the estimated value of our oil shale deposits runs into trillions of dollars, it is not surprising that some very searching questions must be answered before policy decisions can be reached. The public has been relatively apathetic about oil shale. It is true that there have been charges that there is a scandal in the offing which "makes the Teapot Dome look like a tea party,"423 but on the whole, there has been relatively little discussion of the problem in the newspapers and magazines.424 Any comparison to Teapot is, of course, absurd because there has been no aura of secrecy surrounding the oil shale question, and the bitterest critics of the government's oil shale policy seem to be rather poorly informed on the history of the problem. To enable him to reach an informed judgment on the exploitation of oil shale, Secretary of the Interior Udall appointed an advisory board of private citizens in 1964 to make recommendations. The board consisted of the president of Re- 422 de Nevers, Tar Sands and Oil Shales, Scientific American, February 1966, p. 21; Kelly, Oil Shale: 1964 or 1984, Western Resources Conference 237 (1964). 423 J. R. Freeman, The World of Oil Shale, The Texas Observer, Jan. 12, 1968, 1, 4 is the most extreme indictment in print. The author alleges that as a result of his crusade against oil shale leasing, he has been subjected to burglarizing of his files as well as gunshots at the rear of his automobile. |
