RuPaul's Fracking Empire
March 31, 2020 1:39 PM Subscribe
Did RuPaul just announce he has a fracking empire on his ranch?
RuPaul Has a Fracking Empire on His Wyoming Ranch
RuPaul Seemingly Admits to Fracking on His Ranch. No new info, but a bunch of witty tweets!
RuPaul is fracking at the end of the world
RuPaul is an aspirational figure, an outsider who made it big and whose story and experience is meant to inspire and excite the underdog and dreamer that lives inside us all. That kind of transcendence is also part of what makes this moment so strange and unsettling.
RuPaul Has a Fracking Empire on His Wyoming Ranch
RuPaul Seemingly Admits to Fracking on His Ranch. No new info, but a bunch of witty tweets!
RuPaul is fracking at the end of the world
RuPaul is an aspirational figure, an outsider who made it big and whose story and experience is meant to inspire and excite the underdog and dreamer that lives inside us all. That kind of transcendence is also part of what makes this moment so strange and unsettling.
If Ru has a milkshake, and I have a hydraulically-powered straw that can reach all the way across the room, I drink Ru’s milkshake.
I drink it up!
posted by Huffy Puffy at 2:28 PM on March 31, 2020 [16 favorites]
I drink it up!
posted by Huffy Puffy at 2:28 PM on March 31, 2020 [16 favorites]
IANA geologist or a real estate attorney, but if RuPaul has 60,000 acres, and it's fairly contiguous, that seems like enough space to protect quite a bit of subsurface minerals if he so chose. I'm sure wierdo's analysis is true for small landowners, but really? With 60k acres you can still have your hand forced by neighbors? That much area seems like quite a lot of leverage.
posted by agentofselection at 2:39 PM on March 31, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by agentofselection at 2:39 PM on March 31, 2020 [3 favorites]
I suspect that fracking in Wyoming is somewhat like it is here in North Dakota - while it is a deal with the devil, it is not the devil that raised concerns in the eastern US. We're not seeing tap water that can be ignited, etc. The drilling is into shale formations that are fracked 10K below the surface and there has been no leakage into aquifers. The problems with spills are more on the surface or with pipelines.
Also, wierdo is entirely correct on how the rights work. Sometimes the surface owner has nothing to do with drilling/fracking activity. I am a little shocked that RuPaul got any mineral rights when purchasing that 60K acres. NO ONE gives up mineral acres in the west unless they are so financially stressed that they have to raise cash to avoid foreclosure or pay off massive debt. It just isn't done.
posted by Ber at 2:56 PM on March 31, 2020 [4 favorites]
Also, wierdo is entirely correct on how the rights work. Sometimes the surface owner has nothing to do with drilling/fracking activity. I am a little shocked that RuPaul got any mineral rights when purchasing that 60K acres. NO ONE gives up mineral acres in the west unless they are so financially stressed that they have to raise cash to avoid foreclosure or pay off massive debt. It just isn't done.
posted by Ber at 2:56 PM on March 31, 2020 [4 favorites]
With 60k acres you can still have your hand forced by neighbors?
I think you are correct. 60k acres is the equivalent of 100 sq miles. My college roommate's family has a 50k acre ranch - it's 22 miles from one end to the next. At best they can horizontally drill around the edges from other land, but most is off limits if Rupaul wanted it to be.
posted by The_Vegetables at 3:47 PM on March 31, 2020 [1 favorite]
I think you are correct. 60k acres is the equivalent of 100 sq miles. My college roommate's family has a 50k acre ranch - it's 22 miles from one end to the next. At best they can horizontally drill around the edges from other land, but most is off limits if Rupaul wanted it to be.
posted by The_Vegetables at 3:47 PM on March 31, 2020 [1 favorite]
I don't know, RuPaul seemed pretty unashamed about it. He made it sound like one of the main aspects of what he's doing out there, and something he didn't mind doing. I was pretty shocked.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 4:16 PM on March 31, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by Ursula Hitler at 4:16 PM on March 31, 2020 [3 favorites]
the day this story first broke was a very weird day on gay twitter
the problem with fracking in states like wyoming and north dakota IS different from eastern states, mostly because of the constant and hugely increased danger of sexual violence and murder victimizing local native american women, from the company workers crammed into their isolated man camps.
posted by poffin boffin at 6:09 PM on March 31, 2020 [33 favorites]
the problem with fracking in states like wyoming and north dakota IS different from eastern states, mostly because of the constant and hugely increased danger of sexual violence and murder victimizing local native american women, from the company workers crammed into their isolated man camps.
posted by poffin boffin at 6:09 PM on March 31, 2020 [33 favorites]
Yes, you can indeed have your hand forced unless you own the entire pool, which never happens for many different reasons, but the most common in my relatively little experience is either that the subsurface rights were completely severed from the surface rights a century ago or the original surface grantee (often a railroad or other left landholder) kept a part of the subsurface rights when it was "originally" (in the sense of the US legal system, in other contexts there are better words to convey the true situation) sold by the first recorded grantee.
In basins that had previously been explored, which is most of them since we do most of our fracking to extract more oil and/or gas from formations that were considered depleted before fracking was a thing, the company that operated said wells usually has enough of the rights from way back when to force everyone else to pool.
("Pool" does not necessarily mean "physically connected in actual fact", since the laws are written to make it easy to extract but hard to keep petroleum products in the ground)
It's entirely possible that RuPaul does own sufficient rights to prevent any drilling on or under their land, but it's rare in the plains and the southeast. Even big corporate farms get screwed by the implied easements on occasion, though they tend to have enough leverage (read: lawyers on staff) to get the oil companies to do the right thing and put their roads and wells where they won't be disruptive to surface activity, unlike the people who own only a few acres.
posted by wierdo at 8:50 PM on March 31, 2020 [5 favorites]
In basins that had previously been explored, which is most of them since we do most of our fracking to extract more oil and/or gas from formations that were considered depleted before fracking was a thing, the company that operated said wells usually has enough of the rights from way back when to force everyone else to pool.
("Pool" does not necessarily mean "physically connected in actual fact", since the laws are written to make it easy to extract but hard to keep petroleum products in the ground)
It's entirely possible that RuPaul does own sufficient rights to prevent any drilling on or under their land, but it's rare in the plains and the southeast. Even big corporate farms get screwed by the implied easements on occasion, though they tend to have enough leverage (read: lawyers on staff) to get the oil companies to do the right thing and put their roads and wells where they won't be disruptive to surface activity, unlike the people who own only a few acres.
posted by wierdo at 8:50 PM on March 31, 2020 [5 favorites]
If you can't frack yourself, then how in the hell you gonna frack someone else?
posted by meows at 10:14 PM on March 31, 2020 [6 favorites]
posted by meows at 10:14 PM on March 31, 2020 [6 favorites]
With the price of oil, there may be no hurry to get rolling on this endeavor.
posted by 2N2222 at 10:17 PM on March 31, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by 2N2222 at 10:17 PM on March 31, 2020 [2 favorites]
I just wanted to say I have family with big chunks of working ranch land in Wyoming. And some of it is littered with old wells from as far back as the 1920's. It's like Swiss cheese on some of these properties. There are old claims everywhere. So who knows ho much these wells are active or not.
posted by Everyone Expects The Spanish Influenza at 11:05 PM on March 31, 2020
posted by Everyone Expects The Spanish Influenza at 11:05 PM on March 31, 2020
If you can't frack yourself, then how in the hell the frak you gonna frack someone else?
posted by The Tensor at 11:07 PM on March 31, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by The Tensor at 11:07 PM on March 31, 2020 [4 favorites]
Upon reading headline, "OMG! RuPaul has a private BATTLESTAR GAYLACTICA themepark! "
Reading more, "oh that kind of fracking"
posted by otherchaz at 11:12 PM on March 31, 2020 [2 favorites]
Reading more, "oh that kind of fracking"
posted by otherchaz at 11:12 PM on March 31, 2020 [2 favorites]
I see what you did there, meows.
posted by Leeway at 12:30 AM on April 1, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by Leeway at 12:30 AM on April 1, 2020 [1 favorite]
If they haven't broken ground, I doubt the are going to for the next three to five years. The Permian seems like the cheapest, quickest, hottest field, and companies are collapsing from debt and laying thousands of people off. Who knew that "essential" oil and gas was just another lululemon / Amway / MLM scheme?
Also, there are (were?) fracking finance bros on youtube, which is fascinating.
posted by eustatic at 4:53 AM on April 1, 2020
Also, there are (were?) fracking finance bros on youtube, which is fascinating.
posted by eustatic at 4:53 AM on April 1, 2020
Every single day only convinces me more and more that we are actually living in a terrible version of Mad Libs.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 6:56 AM on April 1, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 6:56 AM on April 1, 2020 [3 favorites]
Of they only have 35 wells, it may be mostly on paper.
That said, it s a perfect time to petition RuPaul to stop fracking on their land, lol
posted by eustatic at 7:09 PM on April 1, 2020
That said, it s a perfect time to petition RuPaul to stop fracking on their land, lol
posted by eustatic at 7:09 PM on April 1, 2020
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Pooling sucks in that way, by making it hard to keep your own damn oil in the ground, but it also makes sense given that oil and gas reservoirs do not follow the arbitrary boundaries we draw on the surface and one landowner taking oil from a well drilled on their property necessarily depletes the resource under neighboring property.
In short, it isn't always appropriate to cast mineral leases as a choice on the part of the owner of the mineral rights. Rarely is it appropriate to cast oil/gas extraction on someone's land as a choice on the part of the surface owner, either, since most people who own surface land own few if any of the mineral rights that originally went with it.
posted by wierdo at 2:05 PM on March 31, 2020 [17 favorites]