✍ Scribed by Sabino, Anthony Michael
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
he centuries-old pursuit of the minerals like oil T and gas gave birth not only to the energy industry we know today, but also to a complex system of legal rights and liabilities that provide a rule of law for all those seeking to exploit these resources. Additionally, some of these complexities give rise to distinct subtleties that require years of litigation to sort out.
One such subtlety is the newest proclamation from the United States Supreme Court in the case of Amoco Production Co. v. Southern Ute Indian Tribe, -U.S.
, 1999 U.S. LEXIS 4002 (June 7, 1999). There the Court was confronted with a novel and difficult question: When the U S . government reserved to itself rights to mine coal on Indian tribal lands nearly a century ago, did it also intend to reserve rights to the coal-bed methane gas (CBM gas) that goes with it? This is no small question, given that in modern times CBM gas is widely recognized as a distinct mineral and a valuable energy source in its own right.
Ultimately the Court held that indeed the federal government had not reserved such rights to itself nor to the Native American tribes, and thus the private landowners were free to exploit this resource as their own. In making this decision, the Supreme Court made a startlingly deep analysis into the
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