Salt Lake Tribune | 1916-12-24 | Page 2 | Daniels Defeats Oil Legislation

MILS DEFEATS OILLEGISLATION Refuses to Accept Compro-; mise Proposals Regarding : California Lands. j WASHINGTON'. Dec. 23. Efforts of a j joint congressional committee to agree on j legislation for the relief of claimants to ; lands in California naval oil reserves came j to an abrupt end today when the navy j department, through Secretary Daniels, refused to yield to any compromise pro- poais. The attitude of the navy imperils the mineral lands conservation bill which lias beta before congress for several years and in the upiiuon of committee members will plenum action at this session. The disagreement witii the navy has be 1.-11 over me 1' he lan a inendment, which wuuld grunt relief to private claimants of Cahioriiia oil laiuis, aliened by go eminent em-inent withdrawals of L'JO'J. Two wec-Ks ago a sub-committee of each house was appointed with Senator Pltt-inan Pltt-inan as chairman and with representatives representa-tives of tiie - navy and the interior departments de-partments and the department of justice co-operating. Today it abandoned its worii when it received from Secretary Lauiels flat rejection of compromise proposals pro-posals suggested by the committee and the general land office. The committee pioposed remedial legislation legis-lation for the California claimants, to eliminate from the effect of the pending leasing bill all railroad lands and other patented lands in the naval oi! reserve and all claims involving charges of fraud. It would grant preferential leases only to claimants of unpatented lands who had initiated their rights prior to the first government withdrawal order in September, Septem-ber, inuy, and who had prosecuted the work on their claims in good faith previous pre-vious to the discovery of oil, all royalties, to go to the navy. The proposal would involve about 5000 of the ;:0,OOU acres In what is known as naval oil reserve No. 2, in California. The land office proposal would give preferences prefer-ences to claimants in good faith upon relinquishment re-linquishment of all other claims to title. payment to me government oi oacit royalties roy-alties on oil extracted, all other future royalties to go to the navy. The navy department opposed the plans suggested, it was explained, because they fear the navy's supply of fuel oil would not be adequately protected. "The proposal of the committee," said Senator Pittman today, after the conference con-ference had failed, was for the least possible pos-sible remedial legislation for private claimants. The'positlon of the navy department de-partment has been that t6 give this relief re-lief would cripple the navy. I do not think that it would. Assistant Secretary Roosevelt said the navy requisition at the present time was a million barrels a year, that in ten or twelve years the requirement re-quirement would be 12,000,000 barrels n- nually and that there always should be i about 25.000,000 barrels in reserve for war emergencies. "In the three big naval oil reserves there are estimated to be S39.000.0O0 barrels bar-rels of oil and the government has shale land withdrawals in which there are reported re-ported to be a billion barrels of oil."