How Big Is The Bakken?

The Feds are embarrassingly behind in processing royalty payments for Native Americans living on oil-rich Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.

According to the Bismarck Tribune, about $5 million should be received by tribal members from the federal government this month, again after the personal intervention of Senator Byron Dorgan. Some of the royalty payments had been delayed more than a year simply from bureaucratic foot-dragging.

By the way -- the same bureaucratic environment will be administering ObamaCare. Just saying.

Senator Dorgan was also instrumental in getting the Bureau of Land Management to open the logjam in oil permits affecting the reservation more than a year ago.

How big is the Bakken? That $5 million is just the beginning. The federal agency administering these oil royalty payments for the native Americans in North Dakota says he will have to hire twelve (12) additional bureaucrats / accountants to administer this one program. Incredible.

In fairness to the agency, up to 100 mineral owners can participate in wells in one area. This has been a major issue for oil companies also, finding all the mineral owners tied to a single well. Much of the mineral rights in western North Dakota have been sold and re-sold over the past three generations and last 60 years. Many mineral rights owners are great-grandchildren of original settlers in North Dakota. If one great-grand-couple had six children, who each in turn had six children (we're now up to 36 children in just two generations), one can begin to see the problem.