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Nature of Suit Code: 890
Nature of Suit: Other Statutory Actions
Cause of Action: 

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PUBLISH 

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS 

TENTH CIRCUIT 

JOE AULSTON and LOLA AULSTON, ) 

et al., ) 

) 

Plaintiffs-Appellants, ) 

) 

v. ) No. 

) 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, et al., ) 

) 

Defendants-Appellees, ) 

) 

and ) 

) 

SHELL WESTERN E & P, et al., ) 

) 

Intervenors-Appellees. ) 

88-2349 

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Colorado 

(D.C. No. 87-F-1144) 

Robert H. Bork, Washington, D.C. (Luke J. Danielson, Denver, 

Colorado, and Stephen Muse, San Antonio, Texas, with him on the 

briefs), for Plaintiffs-Appellants. 

George w. Van Cleve (Michael J. Norton, Acting United States 

Attorney and Paula M. Ray, Asst. U.S. Attorney, Denver, Colorado, 

with him on the brief), for Defendants-Appellees. 

Marla J. Williams (Steven B. Richardson with her on the brief), 

Holme Roberts & Owen, Denver, Colorado, for Intervenors-Appellees. 

Before HOLLOWAY, Chief Judge, SEYMOUR, and MOORE, Circuit Judges. 

SEYMOUR, Circuit Judge. 

Appellate Case: 88-2349 Document: 01019844440 Date Filed: 09/20/1990 Page: 1 
This case presents us with the question whether oil and gas 

reservations to the United States in federal land patents pursuant 

to the Agricultural Entry Act of 1914, 30 U,S,C, §§ 121-125 (1988) 

(1914 Act), include deposits of carbon dioxide gas. The 

Department of the Interior and the district court concluded that 

the carbon dioxide gas was reserved to the government. We agree 

and hold that the term "gas" in the 1914 Act reasonably may be 

interpreted to include the carbon dioxide deposits. 

I. 

A, 

Plaintiffs are owners of ranchlands and dryland farms in 

Montezuma and Dolores Counties in the State of Colorado. 

Underlying or adjacent to these lands are portions of the McElmo 

Dome, a geologic formation containing a large amount of nearly 

pure carbon dioxide, which is an inert, non-combustible, odorless 

gas at normal temperature and pressure conditions. The gas was 

discovered in the Dome in the 1950s. Although of little or no 

commercial value for decades, 1 the combination of the domestic oil 

shortages of the 1970s and the resultant development of tertiary 

oil recovery methods employing carbon dioxide suddenly transformed 

1 In the 1930s, carbon dioxide gas had a limited commercial 

value in the making of dry ice for refrigeration. 

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the gas into a valuable resource. Since 1982, carbon dioxide·gas 

has been pumped from plaintiffs' lands by private oil companies 

under a leasing arrangement with the United States government. 

The gas is transported by pipeline to otherwise depleted oil 

fields in Texas, where it is used both as a pressurizer and a 

solvent to enhance oil recovery there. 

The United States' claim to ownership of the carbon dioxide 

gas derives from reservations to the United States of "oil and 

gas" or "oil, gas, potash and sodium" contained in plaintiffs' or 

their predecessors' federal land patents issued under the 

homestead laws. The reservations at issue were created pursuant 

to the Agricultural Entry Act of 1914, ch. 142, 38 Stat. 509 

(codified as amended at 30 u.s.c. §§ 121-125 (1988)) (1914 Act). 

The 1914 Act provided for homestead entry onto lands withdrawn 

from entry, classified, or reported as valuable for "phosphate, 

nitrate, potash, oil, gas, or asphaltic minerals," subject to 

reservations to the United States of the enumerated resources "on 

account of which the lands were withdrawn or classified or 

reported as valuable. " Id. § 121. Plaintiffs claim that the term 

"gas" in the 1914 Act and in the patents refers to combustible 

hydrocarbon gas only. 

To gain a proper understanding of the statute at issue, we 

must put it into its historical context. As is true for much of 

the West, plaintiffs' lands originally comprised part of a vast 

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public domain. In the second half of the nineteenth century,· 

Congress enacted homestead laws to encourage settlement and 

agricultural development of these immense stretches of land. See, 

~, Homestead Act of 1862, ch. 75, 12 Stat. 392 (codified as 

amended at 43 u.s.c. §§ 161-302 (1982)), repealed by Federal Land 

Policy and Management Act of 1976, Pub. L. No. 94-579, 90 Stat. 

2787. 

Settlement occurred at a rapid pace and full fee title to 

much of this land passed into private hands. In the 

conservation-minded, Progressivist era of the first few decades of 

the twentieth century, the concern arose that valuable resources 

in the public domain should remain in public hands to avoid 

imprudent development, add to public revenues, and avert the 

threat of monopolization. See generally Colby, The New Public 

Land Policy with Special Reference to Oil Lands, 3 Cal. L. Rev. 

269 (1915). In particular, the homestead entry laws were viewed 

as subject to abuse by speculators interested only in the mineral 

resources underlying them. See The Classification of the Public 

Lands, 537 USGS Bull. 38-39, Dep't of the Interior (1913) 

(Bulletin 537). Presumably for fear of the consequences of 

legislative delay, the Department of the Interior unilaterally 

withdrew from homestead entry millions of acres believed to 

contain oil, gas, phosphate, or coal. See id. at 38-43; see also 

United States v. Midwest Oil Co., 236 U.S. 459, 478-79 

(1915)(describing executive land withdrawals). 

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In 1910, Congress recognized the executive's authority to 

make land withdrawals and provided a procedure by which the 

Department of the Interior could withdraw any public lands and 

reserve them for the public purpose set forth in the withdrawal 

order. See Pickett Act of 1910, ch. 421, 36 Stat. 847 (codified 

as amended at 43 U.S.C. §§ 141-142 (1970)), repealed by Federal 

Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, Pub. L. No. 94-579, 90 

Stat. 2792; see also Midwest Oil Co., 236 U.S. at 482-83 

(validating executive withdrawals and discussing purpose and 

effect of Pickett Act). The Pickett Act withdrawals were only 

partial, however. When originally enacted, the Act provided that 

lands so withdrawn would remain open for development and purchase 

of ''minerals other than coal, oil, gas and phosphates." Ch. 421, 

36 Stat. 847. In 1912, Congress amended the Pickett Act and 

replaced this list of excluded minerals with a provision allowing 

exploration and purchase of metalliferous minerals on withdrawn 

lands. See Act of August 24, 1912, ch. 369, 37 Stat. 497. Under 

the Pickett Act, the Department of the Interior continued with its 

policy of withdrawing vast quantities of land it believed valuable 

for petroleum (including gas), phosphate, potash, waterpower, 

coal, and other nonmetalliferous minerals. See Letters from the 

Secretary of the Interior to Congress (Dec. 13, 1912 and December 

16, 1913)(Report on Land Withdrawals from Settlement, Location, 

Sale, or Entry under Provisions of the Act of Congress Approved 

June 25, 1910, 36 Stat. 847). 

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Appellate Case: 88-2349 Document: 01019844440 Date Filed: 09/20/1990 Page: 5 
In addition to the Pickett Act land withdrawals, the United 

States Geological Survey (USGS) embarked on a large-scale program 

of classification of the public lands according to their mineral, 

hydrologic, and agricultural characteristics. See generally 

Bulletin 537. Under the USGS system then in use, mineral lands 

could be classified as coal lands, oil and gas lands, potash 

lands, or phosphate lands, among other minerals. See id. 

Concerning oil and gas, the Survey noted: 

"The immediate purpose of the classification of oil and 

gas land is to withhold from entry all lands containing 

valuable deposits of fluid hydrocarbons pending the 

enactment of adequate legislation providing for their 

disposition. The ultimate purpose of the classification 

is to determine the position and extent of the areas 

whose value for their deposits of oil or gas, whether 

proved by actual drilling or indicated by favorable 

geologic conditions, is greater than their value for 

agriculture or other purposes and to provide for a 

disposition of the deposits in accordance with this 

greater value." 

Id. at 117. Once land was so classified, a proposed withdrawal 

order would be sent to the Secretary of the Interior for 

. t t· 2 appropria e ac ion. 

In the wake of these large-scale withdrawals, it was evident 

that valuable farm or ranch lands would go untilled or ungrazed 

because they were withdrawn from entry on account of the valuable 

deposits believed to exist there. Congress responded with a 

2 The Pickett Act also authorized withdrawals to allow time for 

classification of lands. See ch. 421, 36 Stat. 847. 

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Appellate Case: 88-2349 Document: 01019844440 Date Filed: 09/20/1990 Page: 6 
series of acts, including the 1914 Act, permitting homestead entry 

onto such lands while reserving various types of mineral estates 

in the United States, See,~, Act of March 3, 1909, ch, 270, 

35 Stat, 844 (codified at 30 u.s.c. § 81 (1988))(reserving coal); 

Act of August 24, 1912, ch. 367, 37 Stat, 496, repealed by Act of 

December 16, 1930, ch, 14, 46 Stat. 1028 (reserving enumerated 

mineral resources in land patents issued in Utah); 1914 Act 

(authorizing reservations of phosphate, nitrate, potash, oil, gas, 

and asphaltic minerals); Stock Raising Homestead Act of December 

29, 1916, ch, 9, 39 Stat. 864 (codified at 43 u.s.c. § 299 (1982)) 

(reserving "coal and other minerals"); see generally Bate, Mineral 

Exceptions and Reservations in Federal Public Land Patents, 17 

Rocky Mtn. Min. L. Inst, 325, 345-50 (1972). 

Plaintiffs' or their predecessors' patents contain 

reservations of "oil and gas" or "oil, gas, potash and sodium 113 

pursuant to the 1914 Act, A typical patent grants the land to the 

homestead claimant 

"EXCEPTING AND RESERVING TO THE UNITED STATES all oil 

and gas in the lands so patented, and to it, or persons 

authorized by it, the right to prospect for, mine and 

remove such deposits from the same upon compliance with 

the conditions and subject to the provisions and 

limitations of the [1914 Act]." 

Rec., vol. II, at 2. The relevant portions of the 1914 Act in 

turn provide: 

3 In 1933, the 1914 Act was amended to include reservations of 

sodium and sulphur. See Act of Mar. 4, 1933, ch. 278, 47 Stat. 

1570 (codified at 30 u.s.c. § 124 (1988)). 

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Appellate Case: 88-2349 Document: 01019844440 Date Filed: 09/20/1990 Page: 7 
"Lands withdrawn or classified as phosphate, nitrate, 

potash, oil, gas, or asphaltic minerals, or which are 

valuable for these deposits, shall be subject to 

appropriation, location, selection, entry, or purchase, 

if otherwise available, under the nonmineral land laws 

of the United States, whenever such location, selection, 

entry, or purchase shall be made with a view of 

obtaining or passing title with a reservation to the 

United States of the deposits on account of which the 

lands were withdrawn or classified or reported as 

valuable, together with the right to prospect for, mine, 

and remove the same." 

30 U.S.C. § 121 (1988) (emphasis added). 

Section 2 of the 1914 Act specifies that any deposits so 

reserved "shall be subject to disposal by the United 

States ... as shall be hereafter expressly directed by law." 

Id.§ 122. Six years later, Congress provided for the disposal of 

the reserved deposits in the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920, ch. 85, 

41 Stat. 437 (codified as amended at 30 u.s.c. §§ 181-287 (1988)). 

The Mineral Leasing Act provided the Department of the Interior 

with authority to lease deposits of coal, phosphate, oil shale, 

oil, gas, and sodium owned by the United States. Significantly, 

the Mineral Leasing Act expressly excepted helium from its 

provisions regulating the leasing of "gas" rights. See id. § 181. 

Under various versions of this Act, the United States has leased 

its gas rights in hydrocarbons and in carbon dioxide, including 

the carbon dioxide at issue here, to various private concerns. 

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Appellate Case: 88-2349 Document: 01019844440 Date Filed: 09/20/1990 Page: 8 
B. 

In the late 1970s, after the carbon dioxide in the McElmo 

Dome was discovered and its value in oil production became 

apparent, various plaintiffs sought the Department of the 

Interior's determination as to who owned it. The Department 

asserted that the deposits were "gas" within the meaning of the 

reservations in plaintiffs' patents under the 1914 Act. See rec., 

vol. II, at 201-03 (Memorandum from the Regional Solicitor, 

Denver, Department of the Interior, to the State Director of the 

Bureau of Land Management (July 12, 1979)), Plaintiffs responded 

with a class action in the United States District Court for the 

District of Colorado challenging the Interior Department's 

assertion of ownership of the carbon dioxide, and seeking 

compensation under the "Little Tucker Act," 28 u.s.c. § 1346(a)(2) 

(1988). 

The district court dismissed the class action. The attack on 

the Interior Department's determination of ownership was ruled 

unripe because plaintiffs had failed to exhaust their 

administrative remedies by bringing an administrative appeal 

before the Interior Board of Land Appeals (IBLA). See 43 C.F.R. § 

3000.4 (1989). The district court also held it lacked 

jurisdiction over the Tucker Act claim because it exceeded 

$10,000. See 28 u.s.c. § 1346(a)(2). The court observed that 

claims against the United States exceeding $10,000 must be brought 

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in the Claims Court under 28 u.s.c. § 1491 (1988). See Ives v. 

United States, Civ. No. 80-K-705 (D. Colo. March 25, 1981). 

Plaintiffs returned to the administrative arena. Following 

the district court's suggestion, plaintiffs filed a private 

contest action against the Department of the Interior which was 

dismissed because the United States is not a proper defendant in 

such actions. See 43 C.F.R. § 4.450 (1989). The Department 

suggested that plaintiffs file an application for a recordable 

disclaimer of interest, under which the FLPMA authorizes the 

Interior Department to issue a sort of quitclaim deed to clear 

title to real property in which the United States may have a 

colorable but invalid interest, See 43 U.S.C, § 1745 (1982); 43 

C.F.R. §§ 1864.0-1 to .4 (1989). Plaintiffs filed their 

application, which the Department denied, The Department's 

decisions were appealed to the IBLA pursuant to 43 C,F,R, § 

1864,4, and the IBLA affirmed. See Robert D. Lanier, 93 Interior 

Dec, 66 (1986); Norton, I.B.L,A. 88-22 (Nov. 27, 1987), 

Plaintiffs sought review of the IBLA's decision, in 

conjunction with their damages claim, in the United States Claims 

Court. The Claims Court concluded, however, that it had no 

jurisdiction to set aside the IBLA's decision. The court's 

inability to determine ownership of the carbon dioxide also 

precluded consideration of plaintiffs' ~ucker Act claim because 

plaintiffs' ownership of the gas is an obvious predicate to the 

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Appellate Case: 88-2349 Document: 01019844440 Date Filed: 09/20/1990 Page: 10 
validity of their damage claim. The Claims Court therefore 

dismissed the action. See Aulston v. United States, 11 Cl. Ct. 58 

(1986). 

On appeal, the Federal Circuit affirmed. The court realized, 

however, that substantial time had already elapsed in 

administrative and judicial forums and that plaintiffs had yet to 

seek review of the IBLA's decision in the proper forum. By the 

time their ownership would be finally determined, the statute of 

limitations on their damage claim would likely run. The court 

therefore vacated the dismissal of plaintiffs' claim for damages, 

directing that the action be stayed pending resolution of the 

ownership issue. See Aulston v. United States, 823 F.2d 510, 514 

(Fed. Cir. 1987). 

Plaintiffs returned to the Federal District Court in Colorado 

to seek review of the IBLA's decision, and the district court 

affirmed the IBLA. See Aulston v. United States, No. 87-F-1144 

(D. Colo. Aug. 4, 1988). Plaintiffs appealed. 

II. 

Our appellate jurisdiction to review a final order of the 

district court is based on 28 u.s.c. § 1291 (1988). Plaintiffs 

brought their action under 43 U.S.C. § 1745 (1982), and appealed 

to the IBLA pursuant to 43 C.F.R. § 1964.4 (1989). The district 

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court's jurisdiction to review IBLA decisions derives from 2au.s.c. § 1331 (1988) read in conjunction with 5 u.s.c. §§ 701-706 

(1988). 4 

On appeal from a district court's review of an agency 

decision, "'the identical standard of review is employed at both 

levels; and once appealed, the district court decision is accorded 

no particular deference,'" Webb v. Hodel, 878 F.2d 1252, 1254 

(10th Cir. 1989)(quoting Brown v. United States Dep't of the 

Interior, 679 F.2d 747, 748-49 (8th Cir. 1982)). Recently, the 

Supr~me Court has reiterated the analysis a court undertakes when 

it reviews the validity of an agency's interpretation of a statute 

the agency is charged with administering: 

"We first ask 'whether Congress has directly spoken to 

the precise question at issue, If the intent of 

Congress is clear, that is the end of the matter; for 

the court, as well as the agency, must give effect to 

the unambiguously expressed intent of Congress,' 'In 

ascertaining the plain meaning of the statute, the court 

must look to the particular statutory language at issue, 

as well as the language and design of the statute as a 

whole,' But 'if the statute is silent or ambiguous with 

respect to the specific issue, the question for the 

court is whether the agency's answer is based on a 

permissible construction of the statute,' that is, 

whether the agency's construction is 'rational and 

consistent with the statute.'" 

4 Intervenors assert that this action is time-barred under the 

statute of limitations contained in 30 u.s.c. § 226-2 (1988). 

This limitation does not apply to actions under the FLMPA, but 

rather to the validity of lease permits issued pursuant to the 

Mineral Leasing Act, 30 U.S.C, §§ 181-287 (1988), See Park County 

Resource Council v. United States Dep't of Agric., 817 F.2d 609, 

616 (10th Cir. 1987) (30 u.s.c. § 226-2 applies to actions 

contesting agency decisions made under the Mineral Leasing Act). 

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Appellate Case: 88-2349 Document: 01019844440 Date Filed: 09/20/1990 Page: 12 
Sullivan v. Everhart, 110 S. Ct. 960, 964 (1990) (citations 

omitted), However, "[i]f a court, employing traditional tools of 

statutory construction, ascertains that Congress had an intention 

on the precise question at issue, that intention is the law and 

must be given effect." Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources 

Defense Council, 467 U.S. 837, 843 n.9 (1984). 

III. 

A. 

In interpreting statutes, we begin with the relevant 

language. When the terms of a statute are unambiguous, our 

inquiry is complete, except in rare and exceptional circumstances. 

See Rubin v. United States, 449 U.S. 424, 430 (1981), In 

interpreting the relevant language, however, we look to the 

provisions of the whole law, and to its object and policy, See 

Dole v. United Steelworkers, 110 S, Ct, 929, 934 (1990). 

The 1914 Act creates power in the federal government to 

reserve the named resources in federal patents for "[l]ands 

withdrawn or classified as phosphate, nitrate, potash, oil, gas, 

or asphaltic minerals, or which are valuable for those deposits," 

30 U,S,C. § 121 (emphasis added), The operative word "gas" has 

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numerous meanings in common speech, 5 in the natural sciences,·and 

in various legal and industrial contexts. Congress' employment of 

the word in a statute creating power to reserve natural resource 

rights indicates that "gas" should be understood to mean a natural 

resource in the legal and technical context of its commercial 

exploitation. Even within this context, however, the word "gas" 

has meanings supporting both sides of this dispute. 6 

5 A typical dictionary definition of gas reads: "1: a fluid 

(as air) that has neither independent shape nor volume but tends 

to expand indefinitely ... 2a: a gas or gaseous mixture with 

the exception of atmospheric air -- not used scientifically b: a 

gas or gaseous mixture (as laughing gas or ethylene) used to 

produce anesthesia c: a combustible gaseous mixture (as for fuel 

or illumination). . . 3 slang: empty boasting talk ..• 4: 

the state of having or an accumulation of gas in the digestive 

tract; also: distress caused by this 5: a substance (as a war gas 

or tear gas) whether gaseous, liquid, or solid under ordinary 

conditions that can be used to produce a poisionous, asphyxiating 

or irritant atmosphere ... 6a: gasoline b: the accelerator of a 

gasoline powered vehicle .... " Webster's Third New Int'l 

Dictionary 937 (1981). 

6 A widely used manual of oil and gas law contains numerous 

definitions of the word gas. The first two are: 

"'Any fluid, either combustible or noncombustible, which 

is produced in a natural state from the earth and which 

maintains a gasous or rarefied state at ordinary 

temperature and pressure conditions.' 30 C.F.R. § 

221.2(0)(1980). In the oil and gas industries, it means 

natural gas. 

"'Twenty-three states define gas as all natural gas, 

including casinghead gas, and all hydrocarbons not 

defined as oil. Generally, the remaining states 

describe the definition of a gas well but do not 

specifically define natural gas.' 26 Oil & Gas Compact 

Bull. 55 (June 1967)." 

8 H. Williams and C. Meyers, Oil & Gas Law, Manual of Terms 389 

(1987). 

The term "natural gas" also has various definitions within 

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Plaintiffs vigorously maintain that the structure of the 

relevant language of the 1914 Act reflects a clear intent to 

reserve only hydrocarbon gas and to convey all other gas in the 

land patent. In the 1914 Act, the word "gas" appears sandwiched 

between "oil" and "asphaltic minerals," assertedly two "fuel 

minerals, 117 and after a listing of phosphate, nitrate, and potash, 

assertedly three "fertilizer minerals." It would make no sense, 

plaintiffs argue, for the drafter to insert "gas" within a 

the industry: 

"Hydrocarbons which at atmospheric conditions of 

temperature and pressure are in a gasous phase." 

Id. at 588, 

Nonetheless, one commentator writes: 

"'The ordinary rarefied or gaseous hydrocarbons 

found in the earth are referred to generally as "natural 

gas," Non-combustible natural gases occurring in the 

earth, such as carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, helium 

and nitrogen, are generally referred to by their proper 

chemical names. Often, however, non-combustible gases 

are found in combination with combustible gases and the 

mixture is referred to generally as "natural gas," 

without any attempt to distinguish between the 

combustible and non-combustible gases,'" 

Id. (quoting Pruitt, Mineral Terms - Some Problems in Their Use 

and Definition, 11 Rocky Mtn. Min. L. Inst. 1, 16 (1966)) 

(emphasis added). In 1921, the United States Geological Survey 

considered "natural gas" to be a "mechanical mixture" of various 

hydrocarbons and nonhydrocarbon gaseous constituents. See Helium 

Bearing Natural Gas, 86 USGS Bull. 36, Dep't, of the Interior 

(1921). 

7 The phrase "fuel mineral" appears nowhere in the 1914 Act. 

Various executive officials referred to reservations of "fuel 

minerals" in the 1914 Act, See infra at 23. 

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grouping of fuel minerals if the word was intended to refer to 

noncombustible gases such as carbon dioxide. According to 

plaintiffs, Congress intended the courts to apply the principles 

of ejusdem generis 8 to limit the term "gas" to hydrocarbon gas. 

This structural argument overwhelmingly supports the 

proposition that gas indirectly or directly valuable for fuel was 

intended to be reserved. Plaintiffs would have us infer, however, 

that Congress actually considered the combustible and 

noncombustible components of naturally occurring underground gas 

and expressed its intent to reserve only combustible gas by its 

choice of the sequence in which the reserved minerals were listed. 

This proposed interpretation immediately prompts us to ask why 

Congress did not merely reserve "fuel gas" in lieu of relying on 

ejusdem generis. The manipulability of the rule was 

well-recognized even during the era of the 1914 Act: 

"If we should apply the rule of ejusdem generis, what 

qualities or peculiarities of the specified type 'coal,' 

shall be considered in determining the classification 

intended by the use of the word 'mineral'? Are we to 

classify according to value? If so, can it be said that 

oil or gas on the one hand and coal on the other are of 

different kinds or species of minerals? If we classify 

as to use, is it not true that all three are used for 

fuel? Shall the classification be determined by the 

form, density, color, weight, value or uses of the 

particular species mentioned? Taking either value, use, 

8 Ejusdem generis is an intrinsic aid to statutory 

construction. "Where general words follow specific words in a 

statutory enumeration, the general words are construed to embrace 

only objects similar in nature to those objects enumerated by the 

preceding specific words." 2A N. Singer, Sutherland Statutory 

Construction§ 47.17 (1984)(footnote omitted). 

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or nature or origin as the basis of the classification 

mentioned, can we say that oil and coal do not belong to 

the same class? . Such evident difficulty in 

applying the rule of ejusdem generis to the terms of the 

reservation under consideration renders it an unsafe 

guide, and we do not believe any aid in the 

interpretation of the terms used in the reservation will 

be afforded by such rule." 

Luse v. Boatman, 217 S.W. 1096, 1099 (Tex. Civ. App. 1919). 

Indeed, no clear indication exists what classification method 

Congress would have intended the reader to use. The six 

enumerated substances constitute one class if the class is defined 

as "nonmetalliferous minerals." Plaintiffs' suggested subclasses 

of fuel and fertilizer minerals is another possibility. 9 

Representative Scott Ferris, the Chairman of the House Committee 

on the Public Lands in 1914, appeared to have thought that each 

9 This argument is undermined by the judicial rejection of the 

characterization of "oil" as a specific word. In Brennan v. 

Udall, 251 F. Supp. 12 (D, Colo. 1966), aff'd, 379 F.2d 803 (10th 

Cir.), cert. denied, 389 U.S. 975 (1967), for example, the word 

"oil" in the 1914 Act was construed to include oil shale, a solid 

sedimentary rock containing kerogen rather than petroleum, See 

also Northern Natural Gas Co. v. Grounds, 441 F.2d 704, 711 (10th 

Cir.), cert. denied, 404 U.S. 951 (1971) (rejecting 

characterization of "oil" as specific term operating to limit 

definition of "gas" in lease to combustible gas only); Navajo 

Tribe of Indians v. United States, 364 F.2d 320, 327 (Ct. Cl. 

1966) (refusing to apply ejusdem generis to "oil and gas"). 

Brennan and Northern Natural Gas also preclude plaintiffs' 

argument that no drafter of a statute would list five "specific" 

minerals and put the more generic term "gas" somewhere in between 

them. In our opinion in Brennan, we held that "oil" in the 1914 

Act was to be broadly defined to include kerogen, a substance 

containing no oil. In Northern Natural Gas, we held that the 

words "oil" and "gas" have equal status. See 441 F.2d at 711. 

Other minerals enumerated in the Act are thus clearly not as 

"specific" as plaintiffs would have us believe. 

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enumeration may have constituted a separate "class" of minerals. 

See infra at 24. The choice of class thus seems to depend 

primarily on the interpretive result one wants to reach, rather 

than on a clear indication of congressional intent. 

Moreover, in Northern Natural Gas Co. v. Grounds, 441 F.2d 

704, 711 (10th Cir.), cert. denied, 404 U.S. 951 (1971), we 

rejected the application of ejusdem generis in construing an oil 

and gas lease. Indeed, the rule of ejusdem generis has had 

"little application in cases dealing with oil and gas." R. 

Hemingway, Law of Oil & Gas 4-5 (West 1983 2d ed.). We conclude 

that the text of the 1914 Act gives no indication whether Congress 

intended to prevent carbon dioxide gas from passing to the 

patentee. 

B. 

We next address plaintiffs' historical analysis of the 

circumstances surrounding the enactment of the 1914 Act and 

related acts, employing materials from Congressional Reports and 

debates, as well as from the Department of the Interior and its 

subdivisions responsible for managing federal lands. They first 

contend that the 1914 Act's relationship to the Pickett Act of 

1910 reflects Congressional intent to restrict the reservation of 

gas to hydrocarbon gas. As discussed above, the Pickett Act 

provided a procedure by which the Department of the Interior could 

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withdraw lands from homestead entry. The 1914 Act provided for 

homestead entry onto these withdrawn lands, subject to a 

reservation to the United States in the enumerated resources "on 

account of which the lands were withdrawn or classified or 

reported as valuable." 30 U.S.C. § 121. The quoted language, 

maintain plaintiffs, reflects an intent to limit the scope of the 

enumerated substances to those deposits "on account of which the 

lands were withdrawn." Id. Because the lands in question 

10 purportedly were withdrawn "on account of" petroleum, carbon 

dioxide gas deposits are excluded from the "oil and gas" 

reservations in plaintiffs' patents. 

Plaintiffs' argument is unconvincing. First, plaintiffs 

point to no administrative fact-findings that their lands actually 

were the subject of petroleum withdrawals. 11 The 1914 Act also 

10 So-called "petroleum withdrawals" were common under the 

Pickett Act and were also part of the practice of the Interior 

Department prior to the passage of the Pickett Act. See supra 

4-5. 

at 

11 In their Reply Brief at 6 n.2, plaintiffs assert that "oil 

permits" were what led to the reservation of "oil and gas" in 

plaintiffs' patents under the 1914 Act. The oil permits to which 

plaintiffs refer appear in the various patentees' waivers and 

consents to the 1914 Act's reservations in oil and gas in their 

patents. See,~, rec., vol. II, at 181. These permits were 

considered permits for "oil and gas" by the Department of the 

Interior. See id. at 182. Although not entirely clear, these 

prospecting permits appear to refer to the Mineral Leasing Act of 

1920's provisions allowing private persons to prospect for 

minerals owned by the United States. See id. at 189 (referring to 

"permit to prospect for oil and gas under the Act of February 25, 

1920 (41 Stat. 437)"). As we discuss infra at 25-26, the Mineral 

Leasing Act defined gas broadly to include both hydrocarbon and 

nonhydrocarbon gases. Therefore, we do not believe these permits 

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applies to lands "classified or reported as valuable'' for the· six 

enumerated resources. Id. The IBLA noted that "(t]here is no 

evidence that the land involved herein was withdrawn, classified, 

or reported as valuable on account of carbon dioxide. However, 

the mineral reservations clearly embrace the term 'gas,' We must, 

therefore, presume that the land was either withdrawn, classified, 

or reported as valuable on account of 'gas,'" Lanier, 93 Interior 

Dec. at 70 n.6. 

In addition, while there is no evidence that their lands were 

withdrawn specifically "on account of" carbon dioxide gas, 

evidence that the "gas" on account of which the lands were 

withdrawn, classified, or reported as valuable excluded carbon 

dioxide is also absent. It is true that such withdrawals were 

termed "petroleum" withdrawals in the Department's yearly reports 

to Congress, see,~, Letters from the Secretary of the Interior 

to Congress dated Dec. 13, 1912 and Dec. 16, 1913, supra, but 

plaintiffs concede that the withdrawals encompassed oil and "gas." 

See Opening Brief at 19, Congress in the Pickett Act of 1910 

excepted "gas" in withdrawn lands from "exploration, discovery, 

occupation and purchase" under federal mining laws. 36 Stat. 847. 

Plaintiffs provide us no reason for construing the term narrowly 

in the Pickett Act of 1910. Indeed, two years before the 1914 Act 

force a limiting construction on the reservations in the 1914 Act 

to hydrocarbon gas only. To the contrary, they tend to favor a 

construction of "gas" in pari materia with the Mineral Leasing 

Act, 

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was passed, the Pickett Act was amended to exempt nonmetalliferous 

minerals, indubitably encompassing carbon dioxide gas. See 37 

Stat. 497. We do not agree with plaintiffs that the Pickett Act 

somehow forces a limiting construction on the word "gas" in the 

1914 Act. It is entirely plausible that Congress contemplated the 

raw natural gas stream from a gas well in both acts. 

Plaintiffs next contend that Congress knowingly adopted the 

definition of gas then used by the sub-agencies of the Department 

of the Interior charged with the administration of federal lands. 

A 1913 treatise concerning the classification of federal lands 

published by the United States Geological Survey, for example, 

described the immediate purpose of classifying oil and gas land 

"to withhold from entry all lands containing valuable deposits of 

fluid hydrocarbons pending the enactment of adequate legislation 

providing for their disposition." Bulletin 537 at 117. Assuming 

that Congress adopted and approved this language, it reveals no 

clear intent to reserve only hydrocarbon gas.

12 Indeed, that same 

12 In support of its argument that Congress adopted this 

definition, plaintiffs cite to one comment by Representative 

Mondell, the 1914 Act's sponsor, in House debate on the 1914 

Representative Mondell stated: 

"[I]f land is withdrawn for oil, coal and gas, the two 

being always coupled, the reservation would be at the 

oil and the gas and the coal." 

51 Cong. Rec. 10,493 (1914); rec., vol. II, at 22 (emphasis 

added). 

Act. 

In our view this statement again supports the proposition 

that fuel gas was the primary, if not the only, concern of 

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document reflects awareness that "oil and gas" may encompass more 

than hydrocarbons. For instance, the Bulletin defined oil and gas 

as being composed "for the most part of carbon and hydrogen." Id. 

at 112 (emphasis added). Although these other substances 

composing oil and gas remain unnamed, Congress was probably aware 

that while "gas" usually meant fuel gas, it also could mean 

noncombustible, naturally-occurring underground gases such as the 

carbon dioxide at issue here. See~, Mineral Resources of the 

United States, 323-333 USGS Bull., Dep't of the Interior 

(1911)(showing gaseous components of natural gas fields in 

California, including carbon dioxide). 

The Department of the Interior refers several times in 

connection with the entry acts to the reservation of "fuel 

Representative Mondell. It does not mean that he approved of the 

USGS publications on the subject. It also does not mean that he, 

or Congress for that matter, intended to convey all other types of 

gas to the patentee. 

Were this statement given the literal import that plaintiffs 

suggest, certain types of fuel gas such as "dry gas" would pass to 

the patentee because it is not "coupled" with oil. See 8 

H. Williams and C. Meyers, Oil & Gas Law, Manual of Terms, 283 

(1987) (dry gas is gas produced from a stratum that does not 

contain crude oil). On the other hand, it was well known at the 

time that nonhydrocarbon gases often are "coupled" with oil. See 

Mineral Resources of the United States, 323-333 USGS Bull., Dep't. 

of the Interior (1911)(indicating composites of natural gas in 

California fields as including significant nonhydrocarbon 

constituents); Helium-Bearing Natural Gas 86 USGS Bull. 36 

(nonhydrocarbon gases occur in most natural gas and are important 

constituents in some varieties). Perhaps because of these 

uncertainties Congress saw fit to reserve "gas" regardless of its 

chemical composition. Plaintiffs point to no legislative history 

dictating otherwise. 

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minerals" and "fuel gases." For example, Franklin K. Lane, then 

the Secretary of the Department of the Interior, characterized 

coal, phosphate, oil, gas, potassium, and sodium as fuel and 

fertilizer minerals. See rec., vol. II, at 99 (Letter from 

Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Department of the Interior to 

Rep. Scott Ferris, Chairman of the House Committee on Public Lands 

(May 1, 1914) (concerning H.R. 16136, reserving minerals to United 

States)); see also id. at 116 (Letter from Franklin K. Lane, 

Secretary of the Interior to Sen. Henry L. Myers, Chairman of the 

Committee on Public Lands (Jan. 10, 1916) (concerning S. 777, 

referring to enumerated substances as fuel and fertilizer 

minerals)); id. at 141 (Letter from First Assistant Secretary of 

the interior A.A. Jones to Sen. Henry L. Myers, Chairman of the 

Committee on Public Lands (Sept. 16, 1914) (concerning s. 6484 

extending reservations to Alaska and referring to definite policy 

of separate dispositions of "surface estates and mineral deposits 

in certain classes of important fuel and fertilizer minerals")). 

Plaintiffs ask us to infer from these executively generated 

materials that Congress clearly adopted a narrow interpretation of 

gas. We note first that plaintiffs' citations from historical 

sources are selective. Other items of correspondence concerning 

the same subject matter simply enumerate the listed substances. 

See,~, Letter from A.A. Jones, Assistant Secretary of the 

Interior to Rep. Scott Ferris, Chairman of the House Committee on 

Public Lands (Jan. 16, 1914); Letter from Franklin K. Lane to Rep. 

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Scott Ferris, Chairman of the House Committee on Public Lands-

(Mar. 12, 1914). More significantly, the 1914 Act itself 

incorporated none of the language employed in the letters and 

documents to which plaintiffs cite. In fact, there is some 

evidence that some members of Congress rejected the Department's 

proposed characterization. In testimony concerning a 1914 bill to 

lease mineral deposits owned by the United States, the following 

colloquy between the Chairman of the House Public Lands Committee 

and the Director of the USGS took place: 

"Rep. Ferris: This bill purports to deal with six 

classes of deposits in the United States. 

Mr. Smith: You might make that simpler by saying 

there are two general classes of 

deposits, mineral fuels and mineral 

fertilizers. 

Rep. Ferris: I was following the wording of the bill." 

Hearing before the House Committee on the Public Lands, House of 

Representatives, 63d Cong., 2d Sess., on H.R. 14094 (1914) at 16. 

Most importantly, six years later in the Mineral Leasing Act 

of 1920, Congress again employed the word "gas" in an enumeration 

comparable to the 1914 Act, granting authority to the Department 

of the Interior to lease "coal, phosphate, sodium, oil, oil shale, 

or gas" owned by the United States, 41 Stat. 437. The 1920 Act 

also provided that 

"the United States reserves the right to extract helium 

from all gas produced from lands permitted, leased or 

otherwise granted under the provisions of this 

Act ..•. Provided further, That in the extraction of 

helium from gas produced from such lands, it shall be so 

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Appellate Case: 88-2349 Document: 01019844440 Date Filed: 09/20/1990 Page: 24 
extracted as to cause no substantial delay in the 

delivery of gas produced from the well to the purchaser 

thereof . . . . 11 

41 Stat. 438 (emphasis added). The emphasized language has 

meaning only if Congress understood "gas" to mean the raw gas 

stream from a well, including both combustible and noncombustible 

components. Aside from the snippets of legislative history such 

as those discussed above, plaintiffs offer no reason why the word 

"gas" in these two substantially contemporaneous and interrelated 

statutes should not be construed in pari materia. At the very 

least, the 1920 Mineral Leasing Act demonstrates that when 

Congress intended to legislate concerning naturally occurring 

underground gases in a generic sense, it chose the word "gas" with 

full knowledge that the word would be construed to mean 

combustible and noncombustible gases.

13 

13 It is conceivable that Congress intended "gas" to mean 

hydrocarbon gas only in the 1914 Act, and then used the same word 

in the 1920 Mineral Leasing Act generically to mean 

naturally-occurring underground gases. However, two years after 

the enactment of the 1920 Mineral Leasing Act, Congress reserved 

"coal, oil or gas" in Alaska patents without qualifying or 

amending the reach of the term "gas," See Act of March 8, 1922, 

ch. 96, 42 Stat, 415 (codified as amended at 43 U.S.C, §§ 270-11 

to 270-12), repealed in part by FLMPA § 703(a), 90 Stat. 2790 

(1976), Given the explicit concern over helium in the Mineral 

Leasing Act and the implicit assumption that "gas" included 

helium, it seems far-fetched indeed to conclude that Congress 

would have reserved fuel gas only in the 1922 Act. It also seems 

unlikely that Congress would consciously use "gas" to mean fuel 

gas in 1914, then use "gas" to mean naturally-occurring 

underground gases in 1920, and then revert to the narrow meaning 

in the Alaska gas reservations. That Congress would reserve fuel 

gas only in the contiguous United States and then reserve gas in 

the generic sense in Alaska without making itself more explicit 

seems equally irrational. The most rational reading is that 

Congress intended "gas" to mean the same thing in all three 

statutes. 

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Our review of legislative and historical materials 

surrounding the enactment of the 1914 Act fails to clear up the 

ambiguity in the word "gas" as employed in the 1914 Act. 

Plaintiffs point to nothing in these extrinsic sources even 

intimating that Congress has "directly addressed the precise 

question at issue," Chevron, 467 U.S. at 843, in favor of their 

proposed limiting construction. If anything, a comparison of the 

term "gas" as used in related statutes favors a generic 

construction of the term, although we believe it equally likely 

that Congress had no intent whatsoever concerning carbon dioxide 

gas. 

IV. 

Having concluded that Congress was silent on the question 

whether carbon dioxide is "gas" within the meaning of the 1914 

Act, we next address plaintiffs' argument that we must not defer 

to the Department of the Interior's construction of the Act. 

Deference is not warranted, they argue, because there is no 

"longstanding and consistent agency policy of defining carbon 

dioxide to be a 'gas.'" Opening Brief at 35. 

Until the inception of this dispute, the Department of the 

Interior had no occasion to determine explicitly whether carbon 

dioxide is "gas" within the meaning of the 1914 Act. Plaintiffs 

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maintain that the determinative administrative interpretations of 

a statute vesting property rights are those contemporaneous with 

the passage of the Act, and that those interpretations make clear 

the Department's original understanding that only fuel gas was 

reserved. They argue that the Department's current construction 

of the word "gas" to include carbon dioxide conflicts with its 

earlier definitions, robbing the current construction of its 

entitlement to judicial deference. See INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, 

480 U.S. 421, 446 n.30 (1987) (agency interpretation conflicting 

with earlier interpretation entitled to considerably less 

deference than a consistently held view); Shoshone Indian Tribe v. 

Hodel, 903 F.2d 784, 787 (10th Cir. 1990) (same). 

To support their argument, plaintiffs refer us to Bulletin 

537, concerning the classification of the lands of the United 

States. We have already discussed Bulletin 537, see supra at 

21-22, and we think that it constitutes overwhelming evidence that 

gas in the Department's view meant "for the most part 1114 fuel gas, 

but not only fuel gas. Plaintiffs provide no conclusive or even 

persuasive support for their suggested negative inference that 

only fuel gas constituted gas in the early Department 

interpretations, It is equally plausible that the Department had 

14 Other USGS Publications make it clear that th.e Agency 

considered carbon dioxide to be a component of natural gas. See, 

~, Mineral Resources of the United States, 323-333 USGS Bull., 

Dep't of the Interior (1911)(table entitled "The Composition of 

Natural Gas" includes hydrocarbons, carbon dioxide, and other 

gases) . 

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Appellate Case: 88-2349 Document: 01019844440 Date Filed: 09/20/1990 Page: 27 
in mind the raw natural gas stream from a gas well, the only 

significantly valuable component of which was fuel gas. 

This economic fact could well explain why in many 

Departmental publications the term gas was used mainly in the 

context of gas in association with oil. See Petroleum Withdrawals 

and Restorations Affecting the Public Domain, 623 USGS Bull. 59, 

Dep't of the Interior (1916)("close analogy between the oil and 

natural gas industries, at least as far as the production is 

concerned")(emphasis added)(citation omitted)); Bibliography of 

North American Geology for 1914, 617 USGS Bull. 295, Dep't of the 

Interior (1915)(noncombustible gases occurring in oil fields 

generally not subject of analysis); Useful Minerals of the United 

States, 585 USGS Bull. 237, Dep't of the Interior (1914)(natural 

gas is mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons). These documents conflict 

with the Department's current interpretation concerning carbon 

dioxide only if we stretch their meaning to support the negative 

inference suggested by plaintiffs, Indeed, 617 USGS Bulletin, 

published in 1915, characterized ninety-one percent pure carbon 

dioxide gas as "natural gas." See 617 USGS Bull. at 203 (table 

entitled Analyses of Natural Gas From Farnham Dome Utah). We 

conclude that the Department's interpretation of the 1914 Act to 

include carbon dioxide gas in the Act's reservation of "gas" does 

not conflict with its interpretation of the word gas at the time 

of the Act's passage. 

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Plaintiffs, the government, and intervenors all cite to· 

numerous agency definitions of "gas" issued over the years for 

various purposes and in various contexts. Plaintiffs argue that 

these definitions reflect the contradictory and inconsistent 

agency position on the definition of gas over time. The 

government and intervenors maintain that they represent the 

Department's long-standing and consistently held view that "gas" 

includes carbon dioxide gas.

15 Several generalizations can be 

made about them. First, none of these definitions interpret the 

1914 Act. Second, the definitions clearly encompassing 

15 The Department of the Interior, for purposes of the Mineral 

Leasing Act has defined "gas" broadly. See,~, 55 Interior 

Dec. 502, 511, 521 (1936) (providing for royalty "on gas including 

inflammable gas, helium, carbon dioxide and all other natural 

gases and mixtures thereof" under Mineral Leasing Act) (emphasis 

added); 30 C,F,Rr § 221.2(0) (1942), currently codified at 43 

C,F,R, § 3000.0-5(a) (1989) ("gas" under Mineral Leasing Act is 

"any fluid, either combusible or noncombustible, which is produced 

in a natural state from the earth and which maintains a gaseous or 

rarefied state at ordinary temperatures and pressure conditions"); 

30 C.F.R. § 206.151 (1989)('"[g)as' means any fluid, either 

combustible or noncombustible, hydrocarbon or nonhydrocarbon, 

which is extracted from a reservoir and which has neither 

independent shape nor volume" for purposes of Bureau of Land 

Management's leasing of gas on Indian Lands). 

In other statutory contexts, the definition of gas is 

arguably narrower. See 30 C.F.R. § 259.002 (1989) ("'Gas means 

natural gas as defined by the Federal Energy Regulatory 

Commission,'" for purposes of administering the Outer Continental 

Shelf Lands Act). The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ruled 

in 1979 that the carbon dioxide at issue here was not "natural 

gas" for purposes of jurisdiction under the Natural Gas Act. See 

Cortez Pipeline Co. 7 F.E.R.C. (CCH) t 61,024 (1979); see also 

rec,, vol. II, at 160 (memorandum from Solicitor of the Department 

of the Interior to the Secretary of the Department of Interior 

(dated April 9, 1931) noting that issuance of prospecting permits 

for carbon dioxide gas under Mineral Leasing Act could not violate 

oil and gas conservation policy of 1929). 

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Appellate Case: 88-2349 Document: 01019844440 Date Filed: 09/20/1990 Page: 29 
noncombustible gases all interpret the Mineral Leasing Act which 

regulates the conveyance of gas deposits to which the United 

States holds title. Third, the narrower definitions plaintiffs 

cite concern specialized issues of regulatory jurisdiction, 

involve unrelated statutes, or are the products of internal 

memoranda or particularized factual circumstances. See United 

Transp. Union v. Dole, 797 F.2d 823, 831 (10th Cir. 1986) 

(Logan, J. concurring) ("judicial deference generally is reserved 

for agency views that have been reflected in formal pronouncements 

or have been known through other means for a long time" (emphasis 

added)). 16 

16 The rationale for disregarding internal memoranda in 

determining agency positions for purposes of deference is bound up 

with the reason for considering the consistency of agency views in 

the first place. In Udall v. Tallman, 380 U.S. 1, 16 (1965), 

Chief Justice Warren wrote that "[w]hen faced with a problem of 

statutory construction, this Court shows great deference to the 

interpretation given the statute by the officers or agency charged 

with its administration." Part of the reason there for deferring 

to the Department of the Interior's construction of an Executive 

Order was that the interpretation had long been a matter of 

"public record and discussion." Id. at 17. The Court quoted an 

earlier case for its rationale: 

"'[G]overnment is a practical affair intended for 

practical men. Both officers, law-makers and citizens 

naturally adjust themselves to any long-continued action 

of the Executive Department--on the presumption that 

unauthorized acts would not have been allowed to be so 

often repeated as to crystallize into a regular 

practice. That presumption is not reasoning in a circle 

but the basis of a wise and quieting rule that in 

determining the meaning of a statute or the existence of 

a power, weight shall be given to the usage itself--even 

when the validity of the practice is the subject of 

investigation. '" 

Id. (quoting United States v. Midwest Oil Co., 236 U.S. 459, 

472-73 (1915)). 

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The law is clear that "great deference" is accorded 

"consistent and long-standing agency interpretations." Knutzen v. 

Eben Ezer Lutheran Housing Center, 815 F.2d 1343, 1350 (10th Cir. 

1987). This deference generally applies, howev~r, to agency 

interpretations of the statute in question, where the interpreting 

agency is empowered to administer the statute. See Udall v. 

Tallman, 380 U.S. 1, 16 (1965). In exceptional circumstances, 

such as where two different statutes were enacted substantially 

contemporaneously as part of a larger policy or program, or where 

one statute expressly or implicitly incorporates the language and 

policy of the other, we believe the agency's interpretation of the 

related statute should carry some weight so long as the same 

agency is empowered to administer both statutes. We have 

previously discussed the relationship of the Mineral Leasing Act 

and the series of acts, including the 1914 Act, reserving minerals 

subject to disposition under the 1920 Leasing Act. See supra at 

8, 24-25. Based on this relationship, we think that the 

Department of the Interior's interpretations of the word "gas" in 

section 181 of the Mineral Leasing Act are entitled to some 

consideration in reviewing the same agency's interpretation of the 

word in the 1914 Act. 

The definitions cited by plaintiffs interpret such temporally 

and factually distinct statutes as the Outer Continental Shelf 

Lands Act, 43 U.S.C. §§ 1331-1356 (1982); see 30 C.F.R. § 259.002 

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Appellate Case: 88-2349 Document: 01019844440 Date Filed: 09/20/1990 Page: 31 
(1989); 30 C.F.R. § 256.40(h)(1989), or involve separate statutory 

schemes administered by different agencies such as the scope of 

the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's jurisdiction under the 

Natural Gas Act. See Cortez Pipeline Co., 7 F.E.R.C. (CCH) 

,r 61,024 (1979). These wholly distinct interpretations of the 

word "gas" by agencies other than the Department of the Interior 

in these other contexts have no bearing on the Department's 

interpretation of the 1914 Act or of the related Mineral Leasing 

Act, and do not make the Department's practice internally 

. . t t 17 inconsis en. We are also not persuaded that the Interior 

Department memoranda cited by plaintiffs suffice to alter 

substantially the Department's longstanding publicly-held view as 

reflected in the regulations governing the leasing of oil and gas 

deposits. We conclude that the interpretation at issue is 

consistent with the Department's interpretation of the word "gas" 

in related legislation. Some deference to the Department's 

interpretation under Chevron is therefore appropriate. 

17 Plaintiffs also rely on 43 C.F.R. § 2880.0-S(g) (1988), which 

defines "[o]il or gas" as "oil, natural gas, synthetic liquid or 

gaseous fuels, or any refined product produced therefrom." This 

regulation parrots the language in the Mineral Leasing Act's 

provisions governing rights-of-way for pipelines through federal 

lands, See 30 u.s.c. § 185 (1988). It is by no means clear that 

this definition excludes carbon dioxide gas. Indeed, in Exxon 

Corp., 94 Interior Dec. 139 (1987), the IBLA determined that the 

term natural gas includes naturally produced carbon dioxide gas 

within the meaning of 30 U.S.C. § 185 and 43 C.F.R. § 2880.0-S(g). 

This language, in any event, in no way renders internally 

inconsistent the Department of the Interior's forty-five year old 

interpretation of "gas" deposits within the meaning of section 181 

of the Mineral Leasing Act. 

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v. 

We now must consider whether the Department of the Interior's 

construction of the 1914 Act is a permissible one. Sullivan, 110 

S. Ct. at 964. To affirm the Department's decision, we "need not 

conclude that the agency construction was the only one it 

permissibly could have adopted," nor must it accord with "the 

reading [we] would have reached if the question initially had 

arisen in a judicial proceeding." Chevron, 467 U.S. at 843 n.11. 

Rather, we must determine whether it is '"rational and consistent 

with the statute,'" Sullivan, 110 S. Ct. at 964 (quoting NLRB v. 

United Food & Commercial Workers, 484 U.S. 112, 123 (1987)), 

taking into account the fact that a consistent and long-standing 

administrative interpretation of "gas" in the 1914 Act is lacking. 

The Department's inclusion of carbon dioxide gas within the 

1914 Act's reservations certainly does not offend the statute's 

plain language, which simply refers to "gas. 1118 Plaintiffs 

attempt to give this word a limiting construction through the use 

of legislative and other historical materials. Our own search 

18 Nonfuel gases have been determined to be "gas" within the 

meaning of various other statutes in the face of arguments that 

the term "gas" referred only to fuel gas. See,~, Reich v. 

Commissioner, 454 F.2d 1157, 1158 (9th Cir. 1972) (geothermal 

steam is a "gas" within meaning of Internal Revenue Code provision 

providing depletion allowance for oil and gas wells); Amoco Prod. 

Co. v. Wyoming, 751 P.2d 379, 383 (Wyo. 1988) (term "natural gas" 

in state excise tax statute includes "all gases that occur 

naturally in gas produced from drilled wells"). 

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through these materials revealed no clear congressional intent to 

exempt carbon dioxide or any other naturally occurring underground 

gas from the statutory authorization to reserve "gas." 

Accordingly, we will defer to the IBLA's interpretation unless it 

is inconsistent with the purpose and policy of the 1914 Act. 

According to plaintiffs, "[t]he purpose of the 1914 Act was 

to convey all minerals except these carefully enumerated fuel and 

fertilizer minerals on account of which the land had been 

specifically withdrawn." Opening Brief at 27. While this 

characterization is not wholly inaccurate, it is somewhat 

incomplete. In enacting the 1914 Act, Congress was attempting to 

accommodate two concerns: (1) to prevent the mismanagement and 

waste that would occur if certain valuable resources deemed 

necessary for the country's economic development fell into the 

wrong private hands, and (2) to fully realize the nation's 

agricultural potential through the settlement and development 

efforts of homestead entrants. See generally United States v. 

Union Oil Co., 549 F.2d 1271, 1274-76 (9th Cir.)(describing events 

leading to enactment of 1914 Act and related acts), cert. denied, 

434 U.S. 930 (1977). 

Plaintiffs repeatedly point out that, in marked contrast to 

the Stock Raising Homestead Act of 1916, 43 U.S.C. §§ 291-302, the 

1914 Act reserved only the six enumerated classes of minerals 

instead of the entire mineral estate. This feature of the 1914 

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Act presumably resulted from political compromise to overcome· the 

opposition to general reservations by representatives of certain 

Western states, See,~, 51 Cong. Rec. 10493 (1914)(colloquy 

between Representative Mondell of Wyoming arguing for limited 

mineral estate and Representative Mann of Illinois suggesting a 

general mineral reservation), Plaintiffs extrapolate from this 

feature of the 1914 Act their argument that its reservations 

should be very narrowly construed to preserve its purpose to 

convey a limited mineral estate to the homestead entrant or 

purchaser of the surface estate. 

The short answer to plaintiffs' argument is that a 

substantial mineral estate passes to the surface holder regardless 

of how the express reservation of "gas" in the Act is construed. 

All metalliferous minerals, as well as those nonmetalliferous 

minerals not enumerated or reserved, pass to the landowner. 19 

Moreover, Congress failed to modify the term "gas" in the 1914 

Act. Finally, plaintiffs fail to give proper weight to Congress' 

general purpose to ensure proper management and disposition of the 

19 Plaintiffs hotly dispute intervenors' argument that carbon 

dioxide gas should be reserved because no specific intent exists 

to exclude it. This conceptual approach is flawed, plaintiffs 

contend, because requiring specific intent to exclude would 

effectively reserve all minerals the exclusion of which is not 

made clear in the language or the legislative history of the 1914 

Act, We disagree, Specific intent to exclude such metalliferous 

metals as gold, silver and copper, etc. exists because they are 

not enumerated in the act, "Gas," in contrast, is enumerated. 

Intervenors refer, quite obviously, to the absence of specific 

intent to place a limiting construction on the word gas. 

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reserved minerals, including gas, by retaining them in the public 

domain. 

Part of this general purpose was to lay the groundwork for 

the rational disposition of these resources. Accordingly, the 

1914 Act provided for "the right to prospect for, mine, and remove 

the same, such deposits to be subject to disposal by the United 

States only as shall be hereafter expressly directed by law .•.. 

Any person qualified to acquire the reserved deposits may enter 

upon said lands with a view of prospecting for the same." 30 

U.S.C. § 122 (emphasis added). When construing the 1914 Act, the 

law relating to the conveyancing, prospecting for, and 

exploitation of the reserved substances should be given due 

regard. In this respect, at least, analyses relating to similar 

problems in construing private mineral conveyances are 

instructive. 

In Northern Natural Gas Co., 441 F,2d 704, we considered a 

question in the context of an "oil and gas" lease closely 

analogous to the problem we now confront. The landowner lessors 

there contended that helium, a noncombustible gas, did not pass to 

the lessee. Id. at 710. In rejecting the lessors' contention 

that only combustible gas was meant by the term "gas," we looked 

first to determine if the parties had a "specific intent" 

concerning the disposition of helium gas. We concluded that the 

parties "could not have had any intent with regard to it," id. at 

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Appellate Case: 88-2349 Document: 01019844440 Date Filed: 09/20/1990 Page: 36 
714, because when the leases were entered into, helium was 

considered an impurity in the natural gas stream. We then tried 

to determine the parties' general intent. We observed that: 

"General intent should be discovered not by defining and 

redefining the terms used but by considering the 

purposes of the grant in terms of enjoyment of the 

rights created. 

II 

"In our opinion general intent is closer to 

original intent than is specific intent which blossoms 

when a component previously regarded as an impurity 

becomes valuable. The discovery of the use and value of 

a component does not expand the grant but the expansion 

of that discovery into tangible value makes more certain 

the specific object of the general grant. We conclude 

that, absent specific reservations, the grant of gas by 

the leases covered all components of the gas, including 

helium." 

Id. at 714-15. 

The analysis of the leases in Northern Natural Gas, maintain 

plaintiffs, has no application to the construction of a statute 

such as the 1914 Act. We disagree. The 1914 Act envisioned that 

the reserved estates eventually could be the subject of 

conveyances such as leases. Moreover, the leases in Northern 

Natural Gas and the reservations in the 1914 Act each create split 

mineral estates with unique problems common to both. Finally, at 

its simplest level the 1914 Act operates to regulate executive 

conveyances of real property owned by the United States. At 

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bottom, both Northern Natural Gas and the dispute here concern 

what was contemplated in a conveyance of "gas. 1120 

We think it fair to say that Congress' general intent in 

creating the reservation was to put the United States government 

in a position to convey the same rights a lessor of "oil and gas" 

could convey to a lessee to enable the latter to "prospect for, 

mine, and remove the same," 30 U,S,C. § 122. Courts consistently 

have held that a gas lessee, absent an explicit reservation, is 

entitled to the raw natural gas stream, whatever its chemical 

makeup. See Northern Natural Gas, 441 F.2d at 715; Navajo Tribe 

of Indians v. United States, 364 F.2d 320, 326 (Ct.Cl. 1966). 

The analysis in Northern Natural Gas and Navajo Tribe is 

nonetheless inapposite, argue plaintiffs, because here the carbon 

dioxide gas is over ninety-nine percent pure, while in Northern 

Natural Gas and Navajo Tribe the noncombustible elements were 

commingled with the combustible elements. We do not think a rule 

making property rights to different chemical components of natural 

gas dependent on the level of purity (or impurity) of the gas 

would aid in the rational development of the law of mineral 

resource rights. Moreover, as the court in Navajo Tribe wrote: 

20 If anything, plaintiffs' distinction between the private 

conveyances in Northern Natural Gas and the federal patent 

conveyances regulated by the 1914 Act does not favor their 

position. Land grants are usually construed favorably to the 

United States. See Watt v. Western Nuclear, Inc., 462 U.S. 36, 

59-60 (1983). 

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"Although the parties to the lease may have been 

thinking mainly of fuel~type gases, it is still more 

realistic to presume that the grant included not only 

hydrocarbons but the other gaseous elements as well. It 

follows that, whether its percentage was high or low, 

the helium component was part of the 'gas deposit' which 

passed to the lessee," 

Navajo Tribe, 364 F.2d at 326. This reasoning applies equally 

well to our view of Congress' intent when it reserved "gas" in the 

1914 Act. 

Other factors influence our conclusion that the Department of 

the Interior's construction of the 1914 Act is consistent with its 

purpose. The value of the carbon dioxide gas derives for all 

practical purposes from its function as a pressurizer and solvent 

upon being re-injected into "depleted" oil wells. In accord with 

the 1914 Act's purpose of conserving the nation's fuel resources, 

reservation of the gas at issue here operates to preserve 

increasingly scarce domestic sources of fuel. Indeed, a contrary 

construction would undermine the fuel conservation purpose of the 

1914 Act, 

Hydrocarbon gas and the carbon dioxide gas here in question 

also serve parallel functions to some extent, a fact well known 

during the era of the 1914 Act's enactment. See J. Lewis, Methods 

for Increasing the Recovery from Oil Sands, 148 Bureau of Mines 

Bull. 90, Dep't of the Interior (1917)(concerning reinjection of 

hydrocarbon gas and other gases into wells as a method to increase 

oil recovery). Indeed, "[t]he principle of increasing production 

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[of oil] by forcing air or any other gas through the oil sandt and 

many other details of operation, [were] covered [as of 1917] by 

U.S. patents." Id. at 36 n.a (emphasis added). In Utilities 

Prod. Corp. v. Carter Oil Co., 72 F.2d 655 (10th Cir. 1934), we 

held that an oil lessee had the right to use so-called "dry" 

hydrocarbon gas to increase oil production. We wrote: 

"The use of gas for repressurizing was so widely known 

in the industry by 1917 ... that the Interior 

Department had prepared and issued a bulletin of 120 

pages on the subject. Repressurizing was in common use 

in the Appalachian fields in 1916." 

Id. at 659 (emphasis added). To the extent that the value of 

"gas" derives, or derived, from its utility in oil recovery, its 

combustibility is irrelevant. 

We have no way of ascertaining that Congress was aware of the 

value of gas in oil recovery, or whether it intended to reserve it 

for this purpose. However, had Congress been aware of the value 

of carbon dioxide gas in the recovery of oil, it strains credulity 

to conclude that Congress would have created the separate gas 

estates plaintiffs suggest. We therefore conclude that the 

Department of the Interior's construction of the 1914 Act's 

reservation of "gas" to include carbon dioxide gas is "reasonable 

in light of the statutory purpose." Zenith Radio Corp. v. United 

States, 437 U.S. 443, 455 (1978). 

VI. 

The district court's order is AFFIRMED. 

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