Show notes
A lawsuit has been unfolding between the Osage Nation and Enel since 2010, potentially ending with Enel dismantling their 150 MW wind farm. What can wind developers learn from this? How can they avoid these situations moving forward? Expert Doug Sandridge explains the intricacies of Native land rights in the US and why understanding those rights is crucial to expanding the wind industry. Follow Doug on Substack, Linkedin or reach out via email [email protected].
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Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, joined by my co host, Joel Saxum. Today, we're diving into a complex and significant issue at the intersection of renewable energy development and Native American rights. Our guest is Doug Sandridge, a veteran of the energy industry with over 40 years of experience.
Doug is currently the senior vice president at Fulcrum Energy Capital Funds, overseeing land operations and strategy for this private equity firm that invests in energy assets across North America. He's also an adjunct instructor for the executive MBA and energy program at the University of Oklahoma.
And I've only heard good things about that, Doug. Today, Doug will be sharing his insights on the ongoing dispute between the Osage Nation and Enel Green Energy regarding the Osage Wind Project. And this project, which consists of 84 wind turbines, has become the center of a long legal battle that touches on critical issues of tribal mineral rights.
and the development of wind energy on Native American lands. Doug, with his extensive background in land management, regulatory compliance, and stakeholder relations, is uniquely positioned to help us understand the complexities of this case and its potential for implications for the future of wind energy development.
Welcome to Uptime.
Doug Sandridge: Man, it's a great pleasure to be here. And I don't think I've ever had a better introduction. Wow, can I? Thank you so much. That's great.
Joel Saxum: You can play that one the next time you start a new class at the University of Oklahoma. Where you walk in, turn the lights down a little bit, and play the clip.
Doug Sandridge: Excellent.
Allen Hall: So thanks for being here. And you and I have been corresponding for quite a while now. About what is happening in Oklahoma and for those outside of the United States, Oklahoma is right smack dab in the middle of the continental United States. And it has a unique history. It's different than pretty much any other state in the U.
S. Because of its history with Native American tribes. And this has led to some unique situations, which now, it now is in the middle of. And Doug, I want to walk through just the basics of what happened on the O. C. A. When project here, and maybe you could just introduce that background and how we got to where we are today.
Doug Sandridge: Absolutely. And I just want to start by saying whatever we say here today, I don't want it to be reflected as some sort of black eye or. A a bad image for wind in general, this is just an isolated, unique situation, a unique case, and we should not paint the wind industry or the renewable industry with a broad brush thinking that this is how things are done.
We just happen to have a unfortunate situation taking place in Osage County, Oklahoma. Osage tribe is located primarily in a county in northeastern Oklahoma near Tulsa called Osage County and that's their tribal reservation. They actually bought that reservation from the Cherokee tribe.
The Osage were originally located in the Missouri, Ohio Valley area of Missouri and then were relocated to southeastern Kansas. For And then white western European encroachment kept pushing on them, and the federal government decided that they wanted that land that was the Osage reservation in southeastern Kansas, they wanted that for white settlers.
And so they, federal government actually purchased that reservation from the Osage, and with the money that they had from that sale they purchased their own reservation in what is now Oklahoma. At the time, Oklahoma was not a state, it was called the Indian Territory, and it was called the Indian Territory because that was in a real crass way, where the U.
S. had been pushing so many tribes. From the southeastern United States, from central United States, even from the northern United States, they were pushing them all into this small area called Oklahoma, or called Indian Territory, which is now Oklahoma. Cherokee Nation had a huge reservation, and they sold one some land to the Osage, and that Osage became Os, what is current day Osage County, and that that became the permanent reservation for the Osage tribe.
So that's how we got to where we are. And the Osage tribe, when they when they bought the land, they were still considered a sovereign nation by the United States. And so they had their own rules, their own laws, and they governed themselves in that county in Oklahoma, in Osage County. But as the U. S.
was trying to assimilate the Native Americans or first Americans, into the greater United States culture. They were trying to get tribes to give up their tribal sovereignty for citizenship. And so what happened is they basically went to the tribe and said, We will make you U. S. citizens if you'll do X, Y, and Z.
And what they ended up doing is, as they say, allotted, they gave all the land in Osage County was allotted to all of the members of the tribe at that time. So the surface of the land, all of the surface, was divided equally or fairly equally among all the tribal members. And so they all own that land.
They could do with it whatever they want. They could live on it. They could sell it. They could farm it, ranch it. And as it happens, a lot of the surface has over the last hundred years. has gone out of the tribe. The tribe no, tribal members no longer own a lot of the surface. A lot of the surface is owned by farmers and ranchers and white people and not basically non Osage.
I don't know what the percentage is. I'm guessing probably at least 80 or 90 percent of the surface in Osage County is actually owned by non Osage. But a lot, a lot of the county is still governed. You still run by owned by and operated by and the communities are Osage there still but they own the surface.
But the critical point is at the time of allotment, the Osage tribe negotiated with the federal government and basically the government agreed that the Osage tribe as a whole would keep all of the minerals. And they would hold those minerals in trust for all of the Osage tribal members. The individual tribal members owned the surface.
This person owned this section, somebody else owned something else. But the minerals underlying that each of the entire county was retained by the tribe. And the tribe had the right to, to lease it for oil and gas, lease it for mining, for whatever purposes. And you can't do any business related to the minerals in Osage County without dealing with the Osage tribe.
Doug, can I ask you a question
Joel Saxum: about this then? Because when we talked a little bit in a pre interview process, just walking through this thing, that was, like, like you said, they watch the other tribes do certain things. But there's a certain, there's four or five other tribes in the area, and they're Ownership of their lands or their tribal rights to the surface or subsurface is different than what the Osage negotiated with the Osage have.
Can you explain the difference there?
Doug Sandridge: Yes. And there, there are very multiple differences. For instance, the the so called wild tribes, which are the tribes of Western Oklahoma that were the Apache, the Comanche, the Kiowa the Arapaho, those tribes. At the time, it was believed that they had not been exposed to Western law and Western customs enough to deal in their own real property.
And in order to protect them from being swindled by, Westerners by Western Europeans the entire process of leasing from them was maintained by the federal government, so the Bureau of Indian Affairs. So even today, I believe. If you want to lease anything, even if someone, even if an Indian or a Native American owns those rights individually, they are not permitted to lease them because they're still governed by the process of the Bureau of Indian Affairs monitoring managing their affairs for them.
And so then, but in any event, all of the different tribes have different rules that are there that are assessed to their, but the unique the Osage have a unique situation. And I. I said in my Substack article, I studied Indian law a long time ago at University of Oklahoma, and the general takeaway from it was you had three types of law in Oklahoma.
You had the law of the civilized tribes, which was the Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Chickasaw, the Creek, and the Seminole Indians. Those tribes were tribes that had been affected by and been around Western civilization for a lot longer because they were on the East Coast. And so they had become, these are not my words, but in the words of the government, it had become more civilized and so those so called, not my words of legal words of art, those so called civilized tribes were moved to Oklahoma, but they had different rights than the wild tribes and the wild tribes had different rights.