[Congressional Bills 106th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 3063 Enrolled Bill (ENR)]

        H.R.3063

                       One Hundred Sixth Congress

                                 of the

                        United States of America


                          AT THE SECOND SESSION

           Begun and held at the City of Washington on Monday,
             the twenty-fourth day of January, two thousand


                                 An Act


 
  To amend the Mineral Leasing Act to increase the maximum acreage of 
   Federal leases for sodium that may be held by an entity in any one 
                     State, and for other purposes.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. FINDINGS.

    The Congress finds and declares that--
        (1) The Federal lands contain commercial deposits of trona, 
    with the world's largest body of this mineral located on such lands 
    in southwestern Wyoming.
        (2) Trona is mined on Federal lands through Federal sodium 
    leases issued under the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920.
        (3) The primary product of trona mining is soda ash (sodium 
    carbonate), a basic industrial chemical that is used for glass 
    making and a variety of consumer products, including baking soda, 
    detergents, and pharmaceuticals.
        (4) The Mineral Leasing Act sets for each leasable mineral 
    limitations on the amount of acreage of Federal leases any one 
    producer may hold in any one State or nationally.
        (5) The present acreage limitation for Federal sodium (trona) 
    leases has been in place for over five decades, since 1948, and is 
    the oldest acreage limitation in the Mineral Leasing Act. Over this 
    time frame Congress and/or the BLM has revised acreage limits for 
    other minerals to meet the needs of the respective industries. 
    Currently, the sodium lease acreage limitation of 15,360 acres per 
    State is approximately one-third of the per State Federal lease 
    acreage cap for coal (46,080 acres) and potassium (51,200 acres) 
    and one-sixteenth that of oil and gas (246,080 acres).
        (6) Three of the four trona producers in Wyoming are operating 
    mines on Federal leaseholds that contain total acreage close to the 
    sodium lease acreage ceiling.
        (7) The same reasons that Congress cited in enacting increases 
    in other minerals' per State lease acreage caps apply to trona: the 
    advent of modern mine technology, changes in industry economics, 
    greater global competition, and need to conserve the Federal 
    resource.
        (8) Existing trona mines require additional lease acreage to 
    avoid premature closure, and are unable to relinquish mined-out 
    areas to lease new acreage because those areas continue to be used 
    for mine access, ventilation, and tailings disposal and may provide 
    future opportunities for secondary recovery by solution mining.
        (9) Existing trona producers are having to make long term 
    business decisions affecting the type and amount of additional 
    infrastructure investments based on the certainty that sufficient 
    acreage of leaseable trona will be available for mining in the 
    future.
        (10) To maintain the vitality of the domestic trona industry 
    and ensure the continued flow of valuable revenues to the Federal 
    and State governments and products to the American public from 
    trona production on Federal lands, the Mineral Leasing Act should 
    be amended to increase the acreage limitation for Federal sodium 
    leases.

SEC. 2. AMENDMENT OF MINERAL LEASING ACT.

    Paragraph (2) of subsection (b) of section 27 of the Mineral 
Leasing Act (41 Stat. 448; 30 U.S.C. 184(b)(2)) is amended by striking 
``fifteen thousand three hundred and sixty acres'' and inserting 
``30,720 acres''.

                               Speaker of the House of Representatives.

                            Vice President of the United States and    
                                               President of the Senate.