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Feds renew talks to buy Everglades drilling rights
Coralie Carlson Associated Press Writer
The federal government has renewed negotiations to buy mineral rights from a pioneering southwest Florida family to prevent future oil and gas drilling on some of the nation’s most sensitive land, officials said April 28.
The government previously offered $120 million to the Collier family for drilling rights in about 400,000 acres, including land in the Big Cypress National Preserve, Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge and the Ten Thousand Islands National Wildlife Refuge, areas abutting or near Everglades National Park.
But an inquiry into whether the government was offering too much money to a politically powerful family stalled the deal and it expired in November.
Negotiations to come up with a new offer began in earnest April 27 when Bennett Raley, the Interior Department’s assistant secretary for water and science, surveyed the area and met with the Colliers, for whom Collier County is named, in Naples.
“The president and Secretary Norton are committed to acquiring the Collier mineral estates,” Raley said at a Big Cypress visitor center. “Our task now is to pick up and move on to the end goal of acquiring the resources.”
He said the government and the Colliers must first agree on a method to assess the value of the rights. Previous assessments have ranged from $5 million to $482.5 million. New deal talks under way “We’re in the process of talking about a new agreement,” said Robert Duncan, general manager of Collier Resources Co. “We have presented the Interior with a new draft that is similar to the last agreement. We look forward to future conversations.”
After the buyout offer expired in November, the Colliers applied for 26 exploration permits. As part of the hunt, explosives would be set off in thousands of shallow holes to take seismic measurements, Raley said.
“If the Colliers were to proceed on exploration of those potential sites, you’d have a very, very dramatic impact on the reserve,” Raley said.
The Big Cypress preserve was created in 1974 with land bought from the Colliers, but the family retained the mineral rights.
After about seven years of negotiations, President Bush offered to buy the land in May 2002 for $120 million. As part of the deal, the Colliers would keep pumping from two existing Big Cypress sites that produce 2,200 barrels of oil a day, until they run dry.
The Colliers, who believe the rights are worth much more than $120 million, also planned to write off the difference in their taxes as a donation.
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