Idaho Wilderness Hearings

Statement:

COMMITTEE, ROCKY MOUNTAIN OIL AND GAS ASSOCIATION Mr. Mitchell. Thank you, Senator. My name is Jay Mitchell. And I am here today as the chairman of the Public Lands Committee of the Rocky Mountain Oil and Gas Association. RMOGA's position has three basic components. First, mineral resources are potentially as important as surface resources. Second, the continual wilderness study of the RARE II lands must be terminated and the legal sufficiency of the RARE II process must be statutorily affirmed. Third, and certainly the most critical component of any balanced wilderness legislation is language providing for the per261 manent release of lands determined to be unsuitable for wilderness designation. It continues to puzzle us that there is so much controversy over this issue; the permanent designation of some land as wilderness and the permanent release of some land as non-wilderness from continuous wilderness study. Lands placed in wilderness remain so in perpetuity. It seems only reasonable that lands unsuitable for wilderness also be returned for multiple use until Congress decides otherwise. If we have permanent wilderness, then we should have permanent release. We have soft wilderness as proposed by the preservationists, then perhaps we should have soft release. Turning to oil and gas to illustrate what we're really talking about, the production of oil and gas resources does not require a large amount of land. If all the land used for energy and mineral production in history were added up, this acreage would constitute less than one-half of 1 percent of our total land base. The amount of land used for oil and gas development is a fraction of even this small amount. Finding oil and gas is truly like 'looking for a needle in a haystack.' Large amounts of land need to be explored to locate these rare concentrates of mineral resources. And locking away areas before they are explored raises the possibility that vast mineral resources will be foregone by a wilderness designation. Thank you.