Cooper reviews bills that are positive for oil and gas industry, veterans families

By: 
Barbara Anne Greene

Week two of the Wyoming State Legislature wrapped up on Friday. Senator Ed Cooper, R-Ten Sleep, said one of the good bills that came out of the Minerals Committee was an oil and gas bond pooling for small operators. 

SF 20 passed its third reading. Cooper explained,”Recently the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) increased the bonds required for oil and gas wells for an individual well from $5,000 to $25,000. Statewide bonds went from $25,000 to $500,000. It’s really tough on our small operators. If a person has three or four wells making five barrels a day, a stripper company, most of the value of the whole company is just in a bond.” 

Under this bond scenario, Cooper continued, Wyoming would end up with a lot of orphan wells because the companies won’t be able to post a bond that is necessary for the BLM. “What we are doing is creating a bond pool so these small operators can pay a small fee on every barrel to go into that pool. It is administered by the Wyoming Oil and Gas Commission. We are entering into an agreement with the BLM to put all these little wells into this bonding pool. The statewide bond will be held by the Wyoming Oil and Gas Commission.” 

He believes this is a win for Wyoming because if an operator orphans a well, the state bond picks it up. The state also picks up the lease, hopefully to sell to another operator or take funds from the bonding pool to plug the well. 

“What happens right now is if the BLM revokes the bond, they keep the bond, go back to the previous owners until they find someone with a deep enough pocket to pay the bill for plugging that well. This brings a lot of uncertainty into these stripper wells plus it is erroneous in a lot of cases as it’s much more than the well is actually worth.” 

Cooper hopes this will help keep the small wells in production in Wyoming. It may not seem like a big deal except that 30% of oil production in Wyoming is coming from these types of wells. 

Rep. Martha Lawley R-Worland, also a member of the Minerals Committee, supported the bill. 

GOLD STAR VETERANS SURVIVOR BENEFITS BILL 

Cooper explained that the Transportation, Highways and Military Affairs Committee brought forth some bills regarding the military. One was SF 182-Surviving parents of Gold Star veterans-exemptions. The bill provides tax exemptions for surviving parents of veterans as specified. Gold Star veterans are ones that were killed in action. He believes there are 37-38 across Wyoming right now. 

The way the statute reads is that the surviving spouse gets the tax exemptions but if there is no surviving spouse the exemptions can now go to the parents. “I think it is a really good bill. It is doing the right thing. I feel really good about this bill.” 

BAN ON CELLPHONES IN SCHOOL BILL 

SF 21-Ban on cell phone use in school failed in the Senate. The bill would have required school districts to adopt policies prohibiting students from using cell phones and smart watches in schools as specified. Cooper voted against the bill. He said he does think cell phones/smart watches should be banned in the schools, but the policies should be set by the individual school districts not the state. “That bill was one step closer to a centralized school district for the state,” he said. “That should be your school district making that decision. I voted against the bill 100% because it was against local control. The policy they come up with in Cheyenne is going to be different from the policy we need in Basin, Worland, Ten Sleep, Meeteetse, etc.” 

PRESCRIPTIVE EASEMENT FOR ELECTRICITY DELIVERY BILL. 

SF 87 was sponsored by Cooper. The bill establishes prescriptive easements for electricity delivery. “It went into the Corporations Committee this morning (Friday, Jan. 24).” He said, “There was a landowner group out of Cheyenne that opposed the bill. They had a lot of issues with the bill. I laid the bill back into committee because I don’t want the bill to be defeated. It’s a good bill for the right reasons. We went back to the Wyoming REA and said they needed to get with the landowner group to see if there was a way to get the language to work. If we can’t make the language work, then I’ll let the bill die in committee and we will bring it back to the committee for interim study over the summer. Where we can put all sides in one room and come up with language to make it work.” 

LARGE ENERGY PROJECT FUNDING-LEGISLATIVE APPROVAL BILL. 

SF 83 failed to get out of the MInerals Committee due to lack of a motion to move the bill. Cooper stated, “It was a bill asking for legislative approval for large energy projects. It was too restrictive. The amount it was asking for legislative approval for was way too small. The only mechanism we have for funding these projects is through the Wyoming Energy Authority (WEA). Those are matching grants for the permitting to get these projects off the ground. They are usually matched by Department of Energy grants or private funding.” 

He said it is working really well right now and Wyoming is able to react very quickly when the opportunities come up. If it is done only with legislative approval the process could take a year or longer to approve the project. By then the project could be dead. 

The senator continued that the approximately $80 million dollars that have gone through the WEA on these large energy projects in the last couple of years, have been leveraged with about $269 million. More than 3 to 1 that the WEA has been able to leverage these matching funds with. So all together there has been $350 million that has been invested in large energy projects with some $80 million seed money by the state. That is a big thing. That is just to get these projects off the ground. There are all kinds of returns to the state as they grow. “It has been a very successful program thus far. SF 83 was bad for the future of Wyoming. 

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