American Oil and Gas Reporter - November 2019 - 76

ConventionCoverage: North Dakota Petroleum Council

BLM Sends Senior Managers Out West
WATFORD CITY, N.D.-The Bureau
of Land Management's ongoing shift of
its headquarters out of Washington supports
a simple fact: The agency manages 245
million acres of surface area, and most
of that is in the western United States.
William Perry Pendley, BLM's acting
director, told the North Dakota Petroleum
Council's annual convention that the
move had three goals: delegate more responsibility to the field; maximize the
agency's service to the American people;
and put BLM's senior managers closer
to the resources they manage. The plan
thus moves the people closer to their
jobs, he added.
"Although we had 97% of our employees in the West working with you,
most of the leadership was in Washington,"
he noted. "Every day, the department
makes decisions using paper, photographs
and maps. Our belief is it will be more
effective if we have people in the field
actually making those decisions."
BLM will retain a small presence in
Washington, he assured, with 61 employees there, managing congressional relationships, regulatory and budget issues,
and public relations. The rest will work
in state offices or at BLM's new headquarters in Grand Junction, Co.
2018 was a record year, as President
Donald Trump's America First energy
plan shaped the federal government's ex-

William Perry Pendley, acting director at
the Bureau of Land Management, tells
the North Dakota Petroleum Council's
annual convention the agency believes
it can more effectively work if more of
its personnel are closer to the lands
they manage.

76 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

pedited decision making, primarily by
holding online quarterly oil and gas lease
sales, Pendley observed. When producers
can make business decisions based on
dependable government policies, he said,
the local communities that receive 48%
of the funds and 50% of the royalties
from those lease sales benefit.
S 245, the Indian Tribal Energy Development and Self-Determination Act,
which Trump signed Dec. 18, shows the
president's and Interior Secretary David
Bernhardt's commitment to working with
tribal leaders, Pendley said.
Introduced by Senator John Hoeven,
R-N.D., the bill streamlines the process
for Indian governments to enter into
energy resource agreements that authorize
contracts, leases and rights of way between
tribal groups and energy companies without federal involvement, his office describes.
"BLM management is working with
the Bureau of Indian Affairs in order to
finalize these rules, to allow tribes to
make decisions," Pendley said. "We want
tribes to be in control of their own destinies, and to be able to make the decisions
to the best of their abilities and consistent
with what their tribes want to do."
Tribal Relations
The new oil tax revenue agreement
signed by North Dakota and the Mandan,
Hidatsa and Arikara (MHA) Nation Tribal
Council will help both parties as well as
producers, predicted MHA Chairman
Mark Fox. "We made a decision collectively that we could address the tax situation together," he told the association.
"We went to an 80-20 split, with 80% of
the taxes off the trust land going to the
tribe. The trade-off was 80% of revenues
from fee lands go to the state."
According to the governor's office,
two years of negotiations led to the introduction and passage of SB 2312. Under
its provisions, the tribe is expected to increase its tax collection by more than
$33 million in the 2019-21 budget cycle.
Fox said the MHA Nation and the
state recognized that devoting more taxes
to the tribal council would allow it to
fund infrastructure development on Indian
lands-including roads, water resources
and pipelines-needed to increase oil production. "The consequences are beginning
to bear out: Production is up on Fort
Berthold," he indicated. "When we win,

the state wins. The majority of our people
still go off reservation and purchase items.
So, as we win, the state wins."
Across the 988,000 acres of the Fort
Berthold Indian Reservation that is home
to the MHA Nation, as much as $4 billion
of infrastructure development is under
consideration, Fox said. He pointed to a
refinery project as one example, noting
the council was moving to resolve federal
regulatory issues that had delayed work.
A storage and transload center is being
proposed for the reservation, along with
additional pipeline projects, he said.
The MHA Nation also is working to
reduce gas flaring on wells, Fox reported.
"Nobody gets paid if that gas is flared,
so we have to capture it. We have a
number of ongoing projects that emphasize
capturing the gas," he said.
One potential is using the gas to
support farming in greenhouses covering
as much as 2.5 hectares in its initial
phase. The MHA Nation has identified
several sites and will be constructing the
first one soon, Fox revealed.
Methane Rules
Another outcome of North Dakota's
2019 legislative session was a mandate
for state agencies to exert more authority
over emission regulations, specifically the

An oil tax revenue agreement signed by
North Dakota and the Mandan, Hidatsa
and Arikara (MHA) Nation Tribal Council
will help both parties as well as producers, MHA Chairman Mark Fox tells the
North Dakota Petroleum Council. Under
the agreement, which took two years to
negotiate, the tribe should increase its
tax collection by more than $33 million
in the 2019-21 budget cycle.

American Oil and Gas Reporter - November 2019

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