[Ilverin]

A)11.36 million acres refers to the land leased for either fuel or non-fuel minerals. So if you wanted to compare the size of the royalties to the annual fees for the land, you would need to figure out what percentage of the land was used for fuel versus non-fuel mining.

B) The $165 is per 20 acres, not per acre. "In FY 2022, the BLM collected a total of almost $94 million in fees associated with nearly 489,100 active mining claims on Federal lands"

[55555]

Thanks yeah I implied A in my comment. Re: B, oops! Thanks.

My point is the author failed to dig up the one number needed to really see if there’s even a problem here.