Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Gold/Mining/Energy : coastal caribbean (cco@) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Edwin S. Fujinaka who wrote (766)	4/19/1999 5:17:00 PM
From: Edwin S. Fujinaka	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4686

(OT) Except to see what the US Supreme Court can get in to. This case seems like the old Phosphate cases where the issue was whether the old riverbeds were navigable waterways and thus were part of CCO's leaseholdings for purposes of mining minerals. The next time the US Supreme Court sees CCO, the issue will probably be whether the State of Florida effectively "took" the oil drilling and development rights away from CCO. If so, would the damages be ten or hundreds of Billions of dollars? Anyway, the article is not about CCO, but about an unrelated dispute that is being settled by the Supreme Court. It's interesting how no one is interested until there seems to be some actual money at stake. Monday April 19 4:32 PM ET Court Debates Methane Gas Dispute By RICHARD CARELLI Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - A big-stakes Supreme Court dispute over ownership of methane gas found with the coal under federal land seemed to hinge on one question Monday: What is coal? In a lively, hour-long argument session, the justices had trouble coming up with an answer - one they'll need to decide the case from Colorado by late June. At issue is whether a pair of 90-year federal laws that gave the government ownership of the coal applied as well to the methane gas. Amoco Production Co., a subsidiary of Amoco Corp., has purchased the right to drill for natural gas on the Southern Ute Tribe's reservation. While coal on the reservation is owned by the government in trust for the tribe, Amoco says the methane found with the coal is a natural gas it is entitled to take. ''You could hardly find a word that was more commonly understood by the average person in 1909 and 1910,'' contended Amoco's Washington lawyer, Carter Phillips. ''If you take the coal bed methane out of the coal, what you have left is coal,'' he said. Methane is not part of the coal, he added. For most of this century, methane gas was viewed only as a dangerous element of coal mining, but relatively recent technology has made coal bed methane commercially valuable. Phillips was joined in pressing that point by Wyoming Deputy Attorney General Thomas Davidson, who in behalf of five states noted that the court's decision will affect regulatory authority and ''tens of thousands of acres (owned by states) for the benefit of our public schools.'' The five states are Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota and Utah. Lawyers for the Utes and the Clinton administration told the justices a federal appeals court got it right when it ruled last year that the 1909 and 1910 Coal Land acts reserved federal ownership of both coal and methane gas while allowing the land surface to be bought by homesteaders. When Amoco's lawyers appealed to the nation's highest court, they said the appeals court ruling affected ''natural gas worth billions of dollars.'' ''The better view is (coal bed methane gas) is part of the coal ... goes with the coal,'' Justice Department lawyer Jeffrey Minear contended. He said ''coal'' as used in the laws ''describes what nature deposited and miners mined.'' Thomas Shipps, a Durango, Colo., lawyer representing the tribe, said Congress had not intended to reserve rights to ''a degasified, dehydrated lump not found in nature.'' It was difficult to determine from questions and comments from the bench which arguments the court found most persuasive. ''It's a tough case, there's no doubt about it,'' Justice John Paul Stevens said at one point. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked Phillips, Amoco's lawyer, whether coal owners had ''dominion over'' methane gas back when it was not considered an asset. After all, the coal owner would be held responsible for any explosion if efforts to vent the gas failed, she said. ''They were permitted to waste the gas,'' Phillips said. ''What that doesn't give you is title to the (gas).'' When Justice David H. Souter asked Davidson whether gas-rights owners should be able to claim all methane gas found with coal, the Wyoming lawyer answered, ''All that can be removed with drilling techniques.'' Justice Sandra Day O'Connor pointedly noted in comments to Minear, the administration's lawyer, that the federal government at one time renounced ownership of the methane gas but changed its stand after the gas became commercially valuable. And Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist complained that the government ''has danced all around the maypole'' on the ownership issue. Only eight of the nine justices heard arguments in the case. Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who last May reported owning between $15,000 and $50,000 worth of Amoco stock, disqualified himself when the case was granted review in January. The case is Amoco Production Co. vs. Southern Ute Indian Tribe, 98-830. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------