July – August 2020, Volume 48, Number 4

In the summer of 2019, Governor Gordon, a couple of legislative leaders, and the state land office began discussions about the purchase of millions of acres of mineral rights and land owned by the financially troubled Occidental Petroleum (Oxy). The purchase entailed approximately 1 million acres of land and 4 million acres of minerals along the I-80 corridor mostly in Southwest Wyoming, with some acreage in Colorado and Utah. The property is the complicated checkerboard lands and minerals originally granted to the Union Pacific Railroad, sold to Anadarko and then acquired by Occidental Petroleum.

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