New energy collides with old in Osage County. The Osage Nation is gearing up for a Dec. 14 hearing in the lawsuit it filed against St. Louis, Missouri-based Wind Capital Group, the company planning to install roughly 100 wind turbines on a plot of land where the tribe claims oil rights.
“The Osage County Board of Adjustments granted a variance allowing wind turbines to be built on land originally zoned for agricultural use north of Highway 60, west of Pawhuska,” the Pawhuska Journal Capital reported today.
Photo by Pete Zarria
The Osage Nation filed an injunction to stop construction last month, claiming the windmill installation will impede oil production. Wind Capital Group leased 1.5 percent of a 15-square-mile, privately owned area “right in the middle” of a patch of land where the tribe is drilling for oil, Osage Chief John Red Eagle told the Wall Street Journal.
Wind Capital Group says, “There is simply no way a project taking up less than 1.5% of a roughly 15-square-mile area will unlawfully obstruct exploration and development,” but Osage Nation officials and area ranchers say “the impact the wind farm will have a devastating impact on the tall grass prairie,” according to a September News on 6 story.
They say the turbines will prevent drilling, as well as the “aerial spraying of noxious weeds,” and that they pose fire hazards and a risk to wildlife. The infrastructure associated with the farm, as well as the turbines themselves, are a concern, they say.
“We’re not against wind energy. It’s where they are putting them that we are against because it’s an oil producing area and a cattle producing area,” Red Eagle told News on 6.
The nation has owned mineral rights in the area since the 1900s, and they say oil production there “generates millions of dollars in revenue every year for the county and the state,” though they wouldn’t specify a number, WSJ said. Wind Capital Group has promised a $1.5 million economic impact from its wind farm, according to the Pawhuska Journal Capital.
The legal dispute has delayed the wind farm’s construction, which was supposed to begin on Nov. 19 and is contingent on a government tax credit that expires at the end of 2012. If the project can’t be completed by then, it’ll “most likely be scrapped,” the Pawhuska paper reported.
A ruling in this case could set a nationwide precedent. As wind energy companies increasingly set up shop in oil fields, legal battles over land rights will continue to surface. “In oil-producing states, including Oklahoma, ownership of natural gas and oil underground can be sold separately from the rights to control what happens on the surface,” WSJ points out. Those with mineral rights, like the Osage Nation, are guaranteed enough access to carry out their operations, but landowners—in this case, they’re individuals who aren’t involved in the lawsuit—are still free to use and lease the surface area of the land.
The court’s decision on the matter could also provide a definitive answer to a popular—and hotly debated—question: What is the future of energy?
—Holly Wall, News Editor
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http://www.facebook.com/people/Doug-McGee/100000399146621 Doug McGee
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