Filed under: Estates
Last October I wrote about Tom Ford’s move to pay $84,000 to buy the mineral rights beneath his Galisteo ranch in order to protect his land from possible oil exploration in the region. It looks like a pretty smart investment when you consider what is happening to candy billionaire Forrest Mars Jr. Businessweek reports that Mars, who is worth around $14 billion from his family’s ownership of candy company Mars Inc, has been fighting to keep a gas company off his huge Montana ranch. Pinnacle Gas Resources has a mineral lease to the land and a state judge has ruled that the company has the right to enter Mars’ Diamond Cross Ranch to drill an exploratory well. The company is looking for coal-bed methane, natural gas that is often stored in thick coal seams in the region.The ranch is spread over more than 82,000 acres and Pinnacle’s lease covers 10,300 acres of the property. Mars is worried that if the company does find methane they could use millions of gallons of water from underground aquifers to access it. This in turn would hurt the ranch’s ability to maintain the large herds of livestock on the property. Beth Kaeding, chairwoman of the Northern Plains Resource Council, summed the situation up perfectly in an article in the Jackson Hole Star Tribune, saying: “”If you don’t own the mineral rights, it doesn’t matter how huge your ranch is, how politically powerful you are, how much money you have. Mineral rights trump surface rights.”
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