United States Bureau of Land Management Energy and Minerals Technical Assistance Program

Reference to the General Mining Law of 1872 serves as a benchmark for legislation that fosters development. In combination with strong emphasis on individual rights it features a minimal direct government management role . Its primary mechanisms can serve as a basis for measuring all other energy and minerals legislation to determine key changes through time. These mechanisms are:

• Free and open access to the land;
• Relatively unfettered opportunity to conduct exploration and development activities;
• A process whereby permanent, exclusive rights can be acquired; and,
• Freedom from payment of royalties to the federal government.

Once again, it was national public policy that this structure would be deemed successful if the result was the development of the lands involved, and further that this activity contributed to national economic development.

Thus, the first step was to stimulate exploration. This was encouraged by making federal land entirely open, with no restrictions. For much of the early years this right continued unabated, up to and including mine development and extraction. This latter was encouraged by allowing miners to totally control all aspects of their financial destiny. There were no requirements for production sharing, joint ventures, taxes, or royalties. Indeed, it was possible for the entire life of a mining operation to be largely unnoticed.

But, as the turn of the century approached changes began to surface. First, decades of exploration began to reveal the nature and extent of some of the mineral resources. This tended to diminish slightly the arguments in favor of allowing open exploration due to the high cost of finding unknown resources.

Secondly, some of these lands began to acquire value independant of energy and mineral resources by virtue of the settlement that had taken place. Thirdly, some voices were heard which called for the need to derive revenues from the exploitation of these resources. And finally, there was some growing sentiment that there needed to be greater order to the minerals mangement process, including oversight of the extraction process.