H. R. 3063
One Hundred Sixth Congress
of the
United States of America
AT THE SECOND SESSION
Begun and held at the City of Washington on Monday,
the twenty-fourth day of January, two thousand
An Act
To amend the Mineral Leasing Act to increase the maximum acreage of Federal
leases for sodium that may be held by an entity in any one State, and for
other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of
the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. FINDINGS.
The Congress finds and declares that—
(1) The Federal lands contain commercial deposits of trona,
with the world’s largest body of this mineral located on such
lands in southwestern Wyoming.
(2) Trona is mined on Federal lands through Federal
sodium leases issued under the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920.
(3) The primary product of trona mining is soda ash
(sodium carbonate), a basic industrial chemical that is used
for glass making and a variety of consumer products, including
baking soda, detergents, and pharmaceuticals.
(4) The Mineral Leasing Act sets for each leasable mineral
limitations on the amount of acreage of Federal leases any
one producer may hold in any one State or nationally.
(5) The present acreage limitation for Federal sodium
(trona) leases has been in place for over five decades, since
1948, and is the oldest acreage limitation in the Mineral
Leasing Act. Over this time frame Congress and /or the BLM
has revised acreage limits for other minerals to meet the needs
of the respective industries. Currently, the sodium lease acreage
limitation of 15,360 acres per State is approximately one-third
of the per State Federal lease acreage cap for coal (46,080
acres) and potassium (51,200 acres) and one-sixteenth that
of oil and gas (246,080 acres).
(6) Three of the four trona producers in Wyoming are
operating mines on Federal leaseholds that contain total acre-
age close to the sodium lease acreage ceiling.
(7) The same reasons that Congress cited in enacting
increases in other minerals’ per State lease acreage caps apply
to trona: the advent of modern mine technology, changes in
industry economics, greater global competition, and need to
conserve the Federal resource.
(8) Existing trona mines require additional lease acreage
to avoid premature closure, and are unable to relinquish mined-
out areas to lease new acreage because those areas continue
to be used for mine access, ventilation, and tailings disposal
and may provide future opportunities for secondary recovery
by solution mining.
H. R. 3063—2
(9) Existing trona producers are having to make long term
business decisions affecting the type and amount of additional
infrastructure investments based on the certainty that suffi-
cient acreage of leaseable trona will be available for mining
in the future.
(10) To maintain the vitality of the domestic trona industry
and ensure the continued flow of valuable revenues to the
Federal and State governments and products to the American
public from trona production on Federal lands, the Mineral
Leasing Act should be amended to increase the acreage limita-
tion for Federal sodium leases.
SEC. 2. AMENDMENT OF MINERAL LEASING ACT.
Paragraph (2) of subsection (b) of section 27 of the Mineral
Leasing Act (41 Stat. 448; 30 U.S.C. 184(b)(2)) is amended by
striking ‘‘fifteen thousand three hundred and sixty acres’’ and
inserting ‘‘30,720 acres’’.
Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Vice President of the United States and
President of the Senate.