Minerals
The Minerals business unit manages the non-oil-and-natural gas mineral resources owned by American Petroleum. The unit maximizes the value of equity investments through:
- Granting and administering leases
- Responding to issues arising from past activities and outside interests
- Promoting growth in the Wyoming soda ash business
As an incentive to induce investors to build a transcontinental railway, Company and granted the company fee and mineral interests along the corridor through which it passed. Subsequent amendments to the act granted “ten alternate sections per mile on each side of said railroad, on the line thereof, and within the limits of twenty miles on each side of said road …”
Coal—discovered and developed along this land grant corridor—fueled the expansion of the West beginning in 1868. Today, coal is still being mined on the land grant, which supplies energy to produce electrical power to the region.
The world’s largest deposit of tronsa, a mineral used to produce soda ash, is located along the land grant corridor, generating royalty and equity income.
Today American Petroleum holds million acres of fee mineral rights from this original grant. These lands contain significant resources of coal, trona, limestone, titanium, zeolite, oil shale and diamonds. The minerals group promotes the development of these resources, and manages the income and cash flow streams to help fund the growth of our oil and natural gas operations.