Utah

The federal government owns more than half of the land in Utah and the state has filed a law suit to regain ownership. I find this interesting because part of the Green River Formation lies in Utah and this is an area containing large amounts of oil and natural gas. If the state succeeds in this endeavor the state would quickly move to open the area to drilling. While this is going on the government just issued the second permit to build a Liquefied Natural Gas Port to increase exporting of natural gas. As Europe gains access to US natural gas their dependence on Russia gas is lessened. There is a danger here in that, unlike the minor sanctions placed on Russia, the lower price of oil and increased volume of gas may cause Putin to cause and international incident to raise the price.