Custer National Forest, MT

Rancher Not Informed about Mineral Leasing

By Jeanie Alderson

My father and two sisters own Bones Brothers Ranch, a cow/calf ranching operation in southeastern Montana. Like many ranches in this part of Montana, ours has been built over the last 110 years. We own and pay taxes on 8,435 acres, and lease grazing land on the Custer National Forest. While we own some of the minerals below our land, other family members and the federal government own the rest. Many of the federal minerals are under land that is very close to our homes.

I knew that the federal government owned minerals below our ranch; however, I knew nothing about the process of federal mineral leasing. In December 2000, I called a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) official in Miles City to find out if the minerals under our ranch had been leased for coalbed methane development. From the information I eventually received from this BLM official, I learned that five companies and individuals had leased the federal minerals below our land. Although the BLM does not distinguish between regular oil and gas leases and coalbed methane leases, all indications point to these minerals being leased for coalbed methane development. 

BLM never informed me they were leasing minerals under our ranch. BLM never asked for input regarding lease stipulations. I was never told about the leasing process, nor did I receive any information about the relationship between surface owners and mineral owners in regard to the development of federal minerals.

Had we been able to be involved in the leasing process we could have provided helpful information about our ranching operation, and how leasing decisions will affect our ranch. We have an intimate knowledge of the landscape and could have provided information about wildlife habitat, native plants, unstable slopes, watersheds and so forth. We could have provided information about where not to allow drilling, and where it might be acceptable. This information could have guided the leasing in a more reasonable and, ultimately more effective, manner.

In the present situation, we had no input into a process that will ultimately affect our land, water, business and lives forever. It seems like common sense that landowners should have more say in what happens on their property, but the simple truth is that oil and gas rights take precedence over surface rights.

Reprinted with permission from the Western Organization of Resource Councils