Monday, December 5, 2016

Reuters — Trump Advisors Aim to Privatize Untapped Oil Reserves

Native American reservations cover just 2% of the United States, but they may contain about a fifth of the nation’s oil and gas, along with vast coal reserves.
Now, a group of advisors to President-elect Donald Trump on Native American issues wants to free those resources from what they call a suffocating federal bureaucracy that holds title to 56 million acres of tribal lands, two chairmen of the coalition told Reuters in exclusive interviews.
The group proposes to put those lands into private ownership – a politically explosive idea that could upend more than century of policy designed to preserve Indian tribes on U.S.-owned reservations, which are governed by tribal leaders as sovereign nations. 
Fortune
Trump Advisors Aim to Privatize Untapped Oil Reserves
Reuters

5 comments:

Unknown said...

The headline in Fortune is misleading. My title below reflects the reality of the proposal much better.

Trump Advisors Aim to get Tribal Land Revert to Tribal Ownership Away From Federal Ownership

Tom Hickey said...

My reading is that the Native Americans view it as an issue of sovereignty, while the colonials view it as an issue based on ownership.

Very different world views.

Peter Pan said...

Why not just take the oil? Works in the ME, should work at home.

Unknown said...

Bob, the Federal government has been operating on that premise on Indian lands as long as Indian lands have been there. The federal government, offers drilling leases almost free to the oil companies.

The Trump advisor proposals would work against that subsidy to the oil companies.

Peter Pan said...

Offering drilling leases almost free = a suffocating federal bureaucracy?

Maybe there's a Tribal Elite itching to get in on the looting.