Misleading bias
I think if Paul Danish wishes to advise a five-person Lakewood oil firm, (Re: “Longmont fracking suit: What if Longmont wins?” Danish Plan, Sept. 3) he should sit for the Bar and bone up on oil and gas valuation. His bias is misleading, his motives questionable, his conclusions spurious at best and he appears to delight in an imagined financial disaster for a city that dares to challenge corporate aims. He appears to believe that anything business wishes to do is fine.
First, to impute the presence (not even the extent or quality) of hydrocarbons beneath Longmont based on what has been done or found in Weld County has no basis in even conservative versions of fact. To his credit, Danish acknowledges that West Texas crude trades for far less than in early 2014. This may explain why many conservatives (the latest is Dick Cheney of Halliburton fame) oppose the Iran deal. Removal of sanctions there virtually guarantees sub-$40 oil, probably indefinitely.
Danish even halves his putative “comparable” production example, which can express the probability of discovery and economic production beneath Longmont. But he ignores the costs of such production and finding, expressing his oil “value” not in net but in gross terms. The typical oil and gas “netback” generally averages about onethird the market spot price — that totals around $15 per barrel today.
Danish would do well to examine Boulder County assessment rolls, where more than 96 percent of Longmont lies, and which this year value non-producing mineral estates — even those adjoining properties pumping oil — at less than $6.70 per acre. Compare that to what the surface is worth, and it is very easy to see where “highest and best use” lies.
Maybe Danish ought to buy up severed mineral estates under Longmont.
Better yet, I could alert owners of any kind of income-producing real estate there to his acumen and interest in conjectured property values. Owners of fee simple estates, however, will present a problem to him and to operators, because forced pooling and unitization of these holdings would subject Longmont’s urban residents and commercial interests to an unwanted, inconvenient, noxious, and probably hazardous activity more disruptive than any subsurface “taking.” No one lives a mile down, after all.
Here’s an ever better plan: force TOP Operating or its ilk to buy the entire surface of Longmont’s 26 square miles. Then let them drill.
Probably for nothing.
Gregory A. Iwan, Longmont
Reviewing the law
In response to Mr. Iwan’s letter urging bicyclists to follow the law (Re:
Letters, Sept. 3), I invite him to review the law before purporting to cite it. He urged people to look up the rules. I accepted that challenge and found that everything he said was wrong. I noticed that he is from Longmont, and I am most familiar with the bike laws from Boulder, which admittedly may be different, but we are writing in the Boulder Weekly.
First, bikers don’t always have to stop at stop signs. They are subject to the same laws as pedestrians if they are crossing at crosswalks. So long as they don’t exceed 8 mph, and use the crosswalk, they do not have to stop. I asked a Boulder police officer to verify this understanding and he confirmed it. This law also addresses his second misstatement that bikers are required to walk bikes across roadway. That is incorrect. If they are not crossing at the crosswalk and acting as a pedestrian, bikers are subject to the same rules as motor vehicles, allowing them to continue across intersections as autos do.
Lastly, bikers are allowed to ride two abreast unless they are impeding the reasonable flow of traffic. Single file in not the rule. In fact, some of our canyons have specific signs that bikes need to ride single file in certain blind curves.
Beverly Gholson, Boulder
Trump the loose cannon
Donald Trump should not be a candidate for President of the United States. He is a volatile “loose cannon” who is out of control, and I am not referring to the immigration issue, which has to be addressed by more logical minds.
Trump is the personification of a global bully who would try to bully our potential adversaries into submission, and he could end up initiating major conflicts in the world. My concern is he will “shoot from the hip” and blunder into a nuclear war with Russia or China.
I have been voting as a conservative for various candidates from both parties since 1960, and I do not recall a presidential candidate who is so “off the wall” as Donald Trump.
Mr. Trump is not presidential material and he could be a threat to the security of this country and the world. We need to trump all of his cards and return him to his casinos.
Donald A. Moskowitz/Londonderry, NH
