In case you missed it, Several states are trying to take back much of the land that the federal government has snatched up over the years.
Energy: Lawmakers in resource-rich Western states have had enough of Washington's meddling and are moving to take the federal grip off their lands. Their actions could positively impact gasoline prices...
The movement is particularly relevant because in President Obama's feeble attempt to deflect blame for rising gasoline prices, he has repeatedly claimed that oil production has increased during his term. But what he has failed to mention is that the expansion has been on private lands. Production on federal land has fallen since he took office, due to his restrictive policies.
With Washington out of the way, the oil-rich states of New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Montana can unlock their resources that have been trapped by Washington, which itself is captive to radical environmental interests.
Yeah, these guys sound pretty legit. Clearly the reason gas prices have doubled since 2005 is because President Obama won't let those poor oil companies drill on land owned by the federal government since the 19th century or something.
But yes, most federal land is out in the Rockies. That's because it assumed ownership of most of that land during the mid-1800s, and gave out huge tracts of land as an incentive to build railways, but there's only so many railways to build and it had a
lot of useless mountains and deserts left over. Useless until modern drill technology came along anyway, and anyone who's seen the rather bleak dreamscapes of endless natural gas wells on federal Colorado land can tell you they're neither "owned" by environmentalists, nor locked off to outside interests.
Pretty irrelevant all around though. It sounds like Utah decided to ask for a bunch of federal granted to it, and the rest of the West jumped on the bandwagon. Hey, whatever, if Nevada wants to directly own ungodly swaths of desert, I say let'em. They have a point, if the federal government actually isn't doing anything with a piece of land, there's no reason for it to own it.