. >> i would want to introduce mr. mckee, who is going to be testifying to you probably in about a half hour or so from now. he is the county chairman in my state of utah. he has been the chairman there since 2002. hopefully he is the chairman of the commission at this time. okay. close enough. the importance of the county is very simple, that 50% of 50% of the jobs in that county are tied up with the extraction industry. 60% of all the natural gas that is produced in utah comes from this particular county. this is somebody who can give you expert testimony from somebody who lives it and knows who son there. so he can testify that even though regulations are established to solve problems, sometimes when you actually establish regulation when there is no problem, the usual result is some kind of overreach in coming up with an abstract that does not fit the reality that happens to be there at the time. so i'm appreciative of you giving him close attention to his testimony because he can tell you about this particular issue of

mr. mckee's testimony from utah? >> yes, i did. >> he testified that essentially blm being 59% of the land mass in this county is really putting a crimp on their style in terms of their ability to exploit natural resources because it is federally owned land and federally controlled land. would you comment and i know your first day on this particular set -- >> no, that's a very prolific region in terms of natural gas potential and development. and we've issued quite a few leases up there and quite a few apds. i think when it comes to leasing federal land, we have other important responsibilities that we have to address in terms of biological, cultural considerations. so we go through a leasing process where we go into a full development process. we need to work with the operators and these jurisdictions will vary, depending on the sensitivity of these resources. i know between i think wyoming and utah, well, we have about 6,800 apds that -- what we call front-logged that we have issued apds but the companies have not

let me go on and visit with mr. mckee. most of your land you have got to get building permits and all sorts of permits. in texas we fly through it in weeks months. certainly not years in getting something permitted on on private land. this is costing -- i assume there's a cost associated with this, not just with jobs, is that correct? >> yes, that's correct. this was a study that was just released that shows that the investment on every well is about $6 million in utah. and so when we -- you know, there's the mineral lease royalties, the jobs. there's the -- >> and when land is leased from the federal government you pay a bonus to get the lease. you buy the lease. >> that's correct. >> then from everything that's produced the federal government gets a royalty. we get a percentage of all the oil -- money and all that oil and gas and so forth that we could use to pay for roads and highways, that we can bring into the federal budget to help balance the budget. it's a source of income we're losing as a federal government. >> a

mr. mckee's testimony from uintah, utah? >> yes, i did. >> he testified that essentially blm being the owner of 59% of the landmass in his county is really putting a crimp on their style and jump of the ability to exploit natural resources because it is federally owned land and fairly controlled land. would you comment? i know this is your first day with this set of -- >> in terms of natural gas, it's when development. we've issued quite a few leases out there and was issued quite a few agencies. i think when it comes to leasing federal land, we have other important responsibility we have to address in terms of biological, cultural consideration. so when we go through the leasing process, or we go in a folder from a process we need to work with the operators. these jurisdictions will vary depending on the sensitivity of these resources. i know between i think between wyoming and utah we have about 6800 front blog that we've issued that have not taken action to activate those. i think there's a percentage of those in uintah c