Enel vs. The Osage Nation: An Explanation w/ Doug Sandridge

A lawsuit has been unfolding between the Osage Nation and Enel
since 2010, potentially ending with Enel dismantling their 150 MW
wind farm. What can wind developers learn from this? How can they
avoid these situations moving forward? Expert Doug Sandridge
explains the intricacies of Native land rights in the US and why
understanding those rights is crucial to expanding the wind
industry. Follow Doug on Substack, Linkedin or reach out via email
doug@fulcrumef.com. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly
email update on all things wind technology. This episode is
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www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen
Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host,
Allen Hall, joined by my co host, Joel Saxum. Today, we're diving
into a complex and significant issue at the intersection of
renewable energy development and Native American rights. Our guest
is Doug Sandridge, a veteran of the energy industry with over 40
years of experience. Doug is currently the senior vice president at
Fulcrum Energy Capital Funds, overseeing land operations and
strategy for this private equity firm that invests in energy assets
across North America. He's also an adjunct instructor for the
executive MBA and energy program at the University of Oklahoma. And
I've only heard good things about that, Doug. Today, Doug will be
sharing his insights on the ongoing dispute between the Osage
Nation and Enel Green Energy regarding the Osage Wind Project. And
this project, which consists of 84 wind turbines, has become the
center of a long legal battle that touches on critical issues of
tribal mineral rights. and the development of wind energy on Native
American lands. Doug, with his extensive background in land
management, regulatory compliance, and stakeholder relations, is
uniquely positioned to help us understand the complexities of this
case and its potential for implications for the future of wind
energy development. Welcome to Uptime. Doug Sandridge: Man, it's a
great pleasure to be here. And I don't think I've ever had a better
introduction. Wow, can I? Thank you so much. That's great. Joel
Saxum: You can play that one the next time you start a new class at
the University of Oklahoma. Where you walk in, turn the lights down
a little bit, and play the clip. Doug Sandridge: Excellent. Allen
Hall: So thanks for being here. And you and I have been
corresponding for quite a while now. About what is happening in
Oklahoma and for those outside of the United States, Oklahoma is
right smack dab in the middle of the continental United States. And
it has a unique history. It's different than pretty much any other
state in the U. S. Because of its history with Native American
tribes. And this has led to some unique situations, which now, it
now is in the middle of. And Doug, I want to walk through just the
basics of what happened on the O. C. A. When project here, and
maybe you could just introduce that background and how we got to
where we are today. Doug Sandridge: Absolutely. And I just want to
start by saying whatever we say here today, I don't want it to be
reflected as some sort of black eye or. A a bad image for wind in
general, this is just an isolated, unique situation, a unique case,
and we should not paint the wind industry or the renewable industry
with a broad brush thinking that this is how things are done. We
just happen to have a unfortunate situation taking place in Osage
County, Oklahoma. Osage tribe is located primarily in a county in
northeastern Oklahoma near Tulsa called Osage County and that's
their tribal reservation. They actually bought that reservation
from the Cherokee tribe. The Osage were originally located in the
Missouri, Ohio Valley area of Missouri and then were relocated to
southeastern Kansas. For And then white western European
encroachment kept pushing on them, and the federal government
decided that they wanted that land that was the Osage reservation
in southeastern Kansas, they wanted that for white settlers. And so
they, federal government actually purchased that reservation from
the Osage, and with the money that they had from that sale they
purchased their own reservation in what is now Oklahoma. At the
time, Oklahoma was not a state, it was called the Indian Territory,
and it was called the Indian Territory because that was in a real
crass way, where the U. S. had been pushing so many tribes. From
the southeastern United States, from central United States, even
from the northern United States, they were pushing them all into
this small area called Oklahoma, or called Indian Territory, which
is now Oklahoma. Cherokee Nation had a huge reservation, and they
sold one some land to the Osage, and that Osage became Os, what is
current day Osage County, and that that became the permanent
reservation for the Osage tribe. So that's how we got to where we
are. And the Osage tribe, when they when they bought the land, they
were still considered a sovereign nation by the United States. And
so they had their own rules, their own laws, and they governed
themselves in that county in Oklahoma, in Osage County. But as the
U. S. was trying to assimilate the Native Americans or first
Americans, into the greater United States culture. They were trying
to get tribes to give up their tribal sovereignty for citizenship.
And so what happened is they basically went to the tribe and said,
We will make you U. S. citizens if you'll do X, Y, and Z. And what
they ended up doing is, as they say, allotted, they gave all the
land in Osage County was allotted to all of the members of the
tribe at that time. So the surface of the land, all of the surface,
was divided equally or fairly equally among all the tribal members.
And so they all own that land. They could do with it whatever they
want. They could live on it. They could sell it. They could farm
it, ranch it. And as it happens, a lot of the surface has over the
last hundred years. has gone out of the tribe. The tribe no, tribal
members no longer own a lot of the surface. A lot of the surface is
owned by farmers and ranchers and white people and not basically
non Osage. I don't know what the percentage is. I'm guessing
probably at least 80 or 90 percent of the surface in Osage County
is actually owned by non Osage. But a lot, a lot of the county is
still governed. You still run by owned by and operated by and the
communities are Osage there still but they own the surface. But the
critical point is at the time of allotment, the Osage tribe
negotiated with the federal government and basically the government
agreed that the Osage tribe as a whole would keep all of the
minerals. And they would hold those minerals in trust for all of
the Osage tribal members. The individual tribal members owned the
surface. This person owned this section, somebody else owned
something else. But the minerals underlying that each of the entire
county was retained by the tribe. And the tribe had the right to,
to lease it for oil and gas, lease it for mining, for whatever
purposes. And you can't do any business related to the minerals in
Osage County without dealing with the Osage tribe. Doug, can I ask
you a question Joel Saxum: about this then? Because when we talked
a little bit in a pre interview process, just walking through this
thing, that was, like, like you said, they watch the other tribes
do certain things. But there's a certain, there's four or five
other tribes in the area, and they're Ownership of their lands or
their tribal rights to the surface or subsurface is different than
what the Osage negotiated with the Osage have. Can you explain the
difference there? Doug Sandridge: Yes. And there, there are very
multiple differences. For instance, the the so called wild tribes,
which are the tribes of Western Oklahoma that were the Apache, the
Comanche, the Kiowa the Arapaho, those tribes. At the time, it was
believed that they had not been exposed to Western law and Western
customs enough to deal in their own real property. And in order to
protect them from being swindled by, Westerners by Western
Europeans the entire process of leasing from them was maintained by
the federal government, so the Bureau of Indian Affairs. So even
today, I believe. If you want to lease anything, even if someone,
even if an Indian or a Native American owns those rights
individually, they are not permitted to lease them because they're
still governed by the process of the Bureau of Indian Affairs
monitoring managing their affairs for them. And so then, but in any
event, all of the different tribes have different rules that are
there that are assessed to their, but the unique the Osage have a
unique situation. And I. I said in my Substack article, I studied
Indian law a long time ago at University of Oklahoma, and the
general takeaway from it was you had three types of law in
Oklahoma. You had the law of the civilized tribes, which was the
Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Chickasaw, the Creek, and the Seminole
Indians. Those tribes were tribes that had been affected by and
been around Western civilization for a lot longer because they were
on the East Coast. And so they had become, these are not my words,
but in the words of the government, it had become more civilized
and so those so called, not my words of legal words of art, those
so called civilized tribes were moved to Oklahoma, but they had
different rights than the wild tribes and the wild tribes had
different rights.