Anthrax detected in multiple beef herds and a dead moose in Carbon County

"How can you represent. . . "

Elk Mountain.

Every lawyer has been asked that question at some point.  Usually it's "how can you represent somebody you know is guilty?"

Usually, amongst lawyers, it's regarded as kind of an eye rolling "oh how naive" type of question.  For lawyers who have a philosophical or introspective bent, and I'd submit that's a distance minority, they may have an answer that's based on, basically, defending a system that defends us all.  Maybe they have something even more sophisticated, such as something along the lines of St. Thomas More's statement in A Man For All Seasons:

William Roper : So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

Sir Thomas More : Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

William Roper : Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

Sir Thomas More : Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

That's about the best answer that there may be, and frankly the only one that applies to civil litigation.  We can console ourselves that in representing the interests of the potentially liable, we protect the interest of everyone.

But what about plaintiff's lawyers?

Frankly, the excuse is wearing thin.  

I.e., I don't believe it for a second.  It's all about cash.

And this is a real problem.

The question is what to do about it.

Well, frankly, the average person can't do much.  But you don't really have to accept it, either.

Shunning has a bad name in our culture.  Indeed, one English language European source states:

More specifically, shunning or ostracising is a form of abuse. It is discrimination and silent bullying. Unfortunately, often people who have been shunned also face other forms of abuse, ranging from death threats and physical assaults to murder.

And there's a lot of truth to that.

At the same time, it was and is something that is often practiced to varying degrees in religious communities.  Indeed, up until the revision of the Code of Canon Law in 1983, Catholic excommunications were of two types, vitandus and toleratus, with vitandus requiring the Faithful to cease all normal connections with the excommunicated.  It was very rare, but it could happen. Since 1983 that distinction does not exist.  Some Amish, however, still have such a practice, and they are not alone.

Realizing this is extreme, I also realize, as I've seen pointed out twice, that land locking rich magnates cannot do it without local help. They always hire somebody, I've heard them referred to as "goons" to be their enforcer, and when they need legal help, they hire a Wyoming licensed attorney.  Indeed, in this instance, remarkably, the plaintiff did not use a Denver attorney, which I thought they likely would have. 

And this has always been the case.  Wyoming Stock Growers Association stock detectives were sometimes enforcers back in the late 19th Century, and they were hired men.  In the trial of the Invaders, a local Cheyenne attorney was used, but then again, that was a criminal case, which I do feel differently about.

Elk Mountain is basically mid-way, and out of the way, between Laramie, Rawlins and Saratoga.  People working for Iron Bar Holdings have to go to one of those places for goods and services.  There's really no reason the excluded locals need to sell them anything.  Keep people off. . .drive to Colorado for services.

And on legal services?  I don't know the lawyers involved, so I'm unlikely to every run into them. But I'm not buying them lunch as we often do as a courtesy while on the road, and if I were a local rancher, and keep in mind that outfits like Iron Bar Holdings don't help local ranchers keep on keeping on, I'd tell that person, if they stopped in to ask to go fishing or hunting, to pound sand.

If this sounds extreme, and it actually is, this is what happened with some of the law firms representing Donald Trump in his effort to steal the election.  They backed out after partners in their firms basically, it seems, told Trump's lawyers to chose Trump or the firm.

And there are many other examples.  Lawyers bear no social costs at all for whom they represent in civil suits.  People who regard abortion as murder will sit right down with lawyers representing abortionists, people seeking a radical social change will hire lawyers to advance the change, and the lawyers fellows feel no pressure as a result of that at all.

Maybe they should.

Or is that view fundamentally wrong?

The Invaders

The Invaders, 1893.  Some history repeating going on.

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

Woody Guthrie

The property owner, let's not pretend he's a rancher as that would imply that he makes his money from chiefly from agriculture, who owns the Elk Mountain Ranch has claimed that allowing corner crossing would devalue the property by $3,100,000 to $7,000,000, or so newspaper reports hold.  The press further reports that it was shown this information by a "confidential" source.

More likely his legal representation claimed that.

Okay, let's break this down.

This is the story, as we'll recall, of three out-of-state hunters who hunted on the Elk Mountain Ranch's leased public lands, with Elk Mountain Ranch owned by Iron Bar Holdings, and ended up being tried for trespassing in Carbon County.  According to the Wyoming Secretary of State's website, Iron Bar Holdings is a North Carolina limited liability company registered to do business in Wyoming.

North Carolina?

Well, yes, that's where Fred Eshelman lives.

Eshelman is a pharmacist by training who has done very well, economically, in that field. So well that North Carolina's school of pharmacy, which he donates to, has named that school after him.  His bio appears on their site:

Fred Eshelman, PharmD

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fred Eshelman is the founder of Eshelman Ventures LLC, an investment company primarily interested in private health-care companies. Previously he founded and served as CEO and executive chairman of Pharmaceutical Product Development (PPDI, NASDAQ) prior to the sale of the company to private equity interests.

After PPD he served as the founding chairman and largest shareholder of Furiex Pharmaceuticals (FURX, NASDAQ), a company which licensed and rapidly developed new medicines. Furiex was sold to Forest Labs/Actavis in July, 2014.

His career has also included positions as senior vice president (development) and board member of the former Glaxo, Inc., as well as various management positions with Beecham Laboratories and Boehringer Mannheim Pharmaceuticals.

Eshelman has served on the executive committee of the Medical Foundation of North Carolina, was on the board of trustees for UNC-W and in 2011 was appointed by the NC General Assembly to serve on the Board of Governors for the state’s multicampus university system as well as the NC Biotechnology Center. In addition, he chairs the board of visitors for the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, one of the top pharmacy programs in the United States. In May 2008 the School was named for Eshelman in recognition of his many contributions to the school and the profession.

Eshelman has received many awards including the Davie and Distinguished Service Awards from UNC and Outstanding Alumnus from both the UNC and University of Cincinnati schools of pharmacy, as well as the N.C. Entrepreneur Hall of Fame Award. He earned a B.S. in pharmacy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,  received his Doctor of Pharmacy from the University of Cincinnati, and completed a residency at Cincinnati General Hospital. He is a graduate of the Owner/President Management Program at Harvard Business School.

Indeed, the fact that Eshelman is very wealthy apparently was referenced by one of his employees in the initial confrontation with the Missouri hunters, which isn't a very wise thing to do as it looks bad.  Indeed, it looks bad right away, and then again in court.

So, Iron Bar Holdings is Fred Eshelman, very wealthy pharmaceutical personality.

The Missouri hunters, by all accounts, went to great pains to avoid touching the ground on Elk Mountain.  They brought ladders of some sort to step over the corners.  They were detected by the ranch employees who called the authorities, who frankly weren't really sure what to do, and they declined to issue citations.  Ultimately, this matter was somehow prosecuted in Carbon County, where the jury found there was no trespass.

During this time frame, a civil lawsuit was brought in the state's Second Judicial District. For reasons that aren't clear to me, as I wouldn't have filed it, the Missouri hunters had the case removed to Federal Court, no doubt on jurisdictional grounds.  Also for reasons that aren't clear to me, as I would have thought Iron Bar would have preferred the case to be in Federal Court, Iron Bar sought to have that reversed, unsuccessfully, claiming the Federal Court lacked jurisdiction, a claim that seem pretty stretched given the pretty obvious diversity jurisdiction here.

I wonder if both sides regret their decisions now, given the results of the Carbon County jury trial.  I have to think if the 2nd Judicial District in Rawlins had a jury that said "no trespass" once, they'd have that happen again.

Anyhow, it's in Federal Court. The docket sheet for the case reads as follows:

U.S. District Court
District of Wyoming (Cheyenne)
CIVIL DOCKET FOR CASE #: 2:22-cv-00067-SWS

Iron Bar Holdings LLC v. Cape et al Assigned to: Honorable Scott W Skavdahl Referred to: Honorable Kelly H Rankin Case in other court:  Second Judicial District - Carbon County, Wyoming, Civil Act. No. 22-00034 Cause: 28:1441 Petition for Removal

Date Filed: 03/22/2022 Jury Demand: Both Nature of Suit: 890 Other Statutory Actions Jurisdiction: Federal Question

Plaintiff
Iron Bar Holdings LLC a North Carolina limited liability company registered to do business in Wyoming	represented by	M Gregory Weisz PENCE & MACMILLAN LLC 1720 Carey Avenue, Suite 600 PO Box 765 Cheyenne, WY 82003 307/638-0386 Fax: 307/634-0336 Email: gweisz@penceandmac.com LEAD ATTORNEY ATTORNEY TO BE NOTICED
V.
Movant
Backcountry Hunters & Anglers TERMINATED: 08/31/2022	represented by	Eric B Hanson KEKER, VAN NEST & PETERS 633 Battery St. San Francisco, CA 94111 415-676-2349 Email: ehanson@keker.com TERMINATED: 08/31/2022 LEAD ATTORNEY PRO HAC VICE Patrick Lewallen CHAPMAN VALDEZ & LANSING 125 West 2nd Street PO Box 2710 Casper, WY 82601 307/237-1983 Email: plewallen@bslo.com TERMINATED: 08/31/2022 LEAD ATTORNEY Trevor James Schenk CHAPMAN VALDEZ & LANSING 125 W. 2nd Street PO Box 2710 Casper, WY 82602 307-259-3797 Email: tschenk@bslo.com TERMINATED: 08/31/2022 LEAD ATTORNEY
V.
Defendant
Bradley H Cape	represented by	Ryan A Semerad THE FULLER LAW FIRM 242 South Grant Street Casper, WY 82609 307-265-3455 Fax: 307-265-2859 Email: semerad@thefullerlawyers.com ATTORNEY TO BE NOTICED
Defendant
Zachary M Smith	represented by	Ryan A Semerad (See above for address) ATTORNEY TO BE NOTICED
Defendant
Phillip G Yeomans	represented by	Ryan A Semerad (See above for address) ATTORNEY TO BE NOTICED
Defendant
John W Slowensky	represented by	Ryan A Semerad (See above for address) ATTORNEY TO BE NOTICED
Amicus
Wyoming Stockgrowers Association	represented by	Karen J Budd-Falen BUDD-FALEN LAW OFFICES 300 East 18th Street P O Box 346 Cheyenne, WY 82003 307/632-5105 Fax: 307/637-3891 Email: karen@buddfalen.com LEAD ATTORNEY ATTORNEY TO BE NOTICED
Amicus
Wyoming Wool Growers Association	represented by	Karen J Budd-Falen (See above for address) LEAD ATTORNEY ATTORNEY TO BE NOTICED

What does this tell us?

Well, not much, really, other than that Back Country Hunters & Anglers tried to intervene in the action, no doubt in support of the Missouri hunters, but weren't allowed in.  It also tells us that the Wyoming Stockgrowers Association and the Wyoming Wool Growers Association (which at one time were headed for a merger, but which must not have completed that process) are going to be allowed to file "friend of the court" briefs in this matter.  Those briefs will no doubt be on the side of Iron Bar.¹

Which presents our first historical observation. 

The Wyoming Stockgrowers Association was instrumental in bringing about the Johnson County War and the assassination campaign that was associated with it.  I'm not saying that they organized it, but they were pretty close to the large, and often foreign owned, cattleman part of the extra judicial war against the small ranchers of Natrona and Johnson Counties of the 1890s.

I'm also not saying that they're somehow involved in such efforts today.

I'm am noting that history rhymes, if not repeats, as they say.

So what did Iron Bar's lawsuit claim? Well, see for yourself:

In litigation, under a rule called FRCP 26, parties are required to disclose certain information, including their calculation of damages.  Piecing the news stories together, and reading between the lines, what this probably means is that somehow a reporter got access to a FRCP "self executing" disclosure.  

Normally, these aren't public, but they aren't secret either.  I obviously don't know who this cat got out of the bag, but it was riding around with its head and front feet out of the bag anyhow, and at some point it was going to get out.

Further, what this really means is that Iron Bar is asserting that if corner crossing is allowed, it'll devalue the value of the property as he can't lock up the Federal domain.

Well, hopefully that's exactly what the court rules. I.e., you can cross the corners.

Before we go on, let's note that the argument here is deeply flawed. What's apparently being stated by the plaintiff is that if the court rules that corner crossing isn't illegal, the value of the land drops, as he can't lock people out and charge people for access. 

But if it's illegal, he can't do that, and never could. Being wrong about the law doesn't entitle you to reimbursement.

You can't claim that you'll lose money as something is illegal. That's like arguing if I can't personally close the road and charge people tolls for using it, even though it isn't mine, I'll lose money.  I had no right to do that in the first place.  It doesn't matter if I thought I could.

On the other hand, if he's right, and he can close the corners, it's not like he's arguing that the value of crossing the corner is $3.1M to $7M.

You only get the actual reasonable trespassing fee, which traditionally has been the damage to the land.

Either way you look at it, the damages are pretty low.

This, by the way, is why I didn't vote for Rob Hendry, the ranching Natrona County Commissioner, in the last election.

A lot of other people didn't too, so he's on his way out, but my reason is probably unique.  Some goons of his stopped my son and I and tossed us off public land, or more accuratley deterred us from going where we were going, claiming that if we trespassed there'd be a $10,000 fine.

That's bullshit.

Anyhow, we don't know what will come out of this litigation, and the results are far from guaranteed, but this gets into the topic of the Homestead Acts, the Taylor Grazing Act, and frankly Distributism and Localism.

What Iron Bar is doing here, shouldn't be allowed to do is to lock up public land that it doesn't own. That is what the hunters were accessing.  How does that devalue the land?  As noted, if there is no right, it doesn't.  If the landowner does have that right, it doesn't devalue anything.  The damages claimed here are out of whack.

Moreover, if the purpose of the original homestead acts and the Taylor Grazing Act are kept in mind, we shouldn't even be having this conversation.

The original homestead acts, which is likely how this ranch was started at some point, were intended to induce agriculturalists into lands that were regarded as poor prospects.  The United States at that time, and indeed American culture at that time, regarded development as a good thing and had the concept that development only occurred where agriculture first entered.  The very first homestead act was designed for farmers, and farmers alone, and had that express goal.  As homesteaders moved into the West, however, livestock grazing became the common agricultural pursuit and the homestead act were modified to accommodate that.  By this point, a different sort of development, much less intense than that East of the Mississippi was envisioned, which was cattle centric.

But the law always allowed for other uses of land.  Miners actually had the superior use, their use being so extensive that they could come on land where the agriculturalist owned the surface, and the Federal Government the subsurface, and mine it anyway.

And on the Federal lands, what the agricultural user got was the right to use it, and nothing else whatsoever.

You could also buy Federal lands, of course, and you could simply run cattle on the public domain, free of charge until 1934. That fact came to be hugely significant and led directly to the Johnson County War.  By that time a fairly formal, and extralegal, system of controlling the public lands had developed which favored large landowners, and which was administered by the Wyoming Stock Growers Association.  Indeed, the WSGA did it partially under color of law.  

And, as we know, it ultimately came to war, if private war.  The large cattlemen felt the small ones were all rustler and thieves, and more than that, they were trespassing on an implied right of the large interests to control the land, title or not.  The small cattlemen, on the other hand, were largely compliant with the law, had a right to homestead, and were trying just to get by.

The small cattlemen won the Johnson County War on the field, but weren't able to put the offenders behind bars, for reasons we'll deal with elsewhere. Their defense of their ground, however, did put an end to the threat of the large cattlemen snuffing out homesteading.  It didn't completely end the violence, however, which went on, including in evolved forms with evolved causes, into the 20th Century.  In southwestern Wyoming it effectively came to an end with the hanging of Tom Horn for the crime of killing Willie Nickell, and in central Wyoming it came to an end in 1909 with the prosecution of the killers of the Spring Creek Raid.

But some portions of the old contest remain, with all the questions that existed in some form still remaining.  Some of them are existential.

To note a few, to what extent are the uberwealthy entitled to use ground at all, when their vast resources mean that the ranching aspect of ranch land is a mere incidental to their ownership?

To what extent is any human being entitled to keep others off land they aren't directly using at the time, or aren't using in a means that's contrary to the non owning entrants use?

Is it just that land that was acquired by a government agricultural land distribution program, a sort of social welfare for agriculturalist, is now owned by people who are not in that category in some fashion?

Isn't hunting more elemental than anything else, with accordingly superior rights in every existential and environmental fashion.

If you aren't touching the ground, are you really trespassing?

I'll note that I'm not saying that Fred Eschelman is a bad person.  According to what little I've read on him, he's donated major conservation easements on lands he's held in Wyoming, which is a very good thing to do.  Some of his statements make him appear to be a conservationist of the Nature Conservancy type.  An argument can be made that, in 2022, but for people like Eschelman, large blocks of land would bet all chopped up.

An argument can also be made, however, that agricultural land ought not to be owned by people who do not have some sort of direct role, participation, or interest in agriculture, or at least in the community, which at Eschelman's economic level is pretty difficult to do.  Having vast, vast amounts of money, more than the regular rich, so to speak, puts a person in a category all of its own and it's a problematic one.  The fact that levels of wealth like that are allowed to even occur suggest a certain deficiency in our economy.  And that deficiency allows a person to view people like the Missouri hunters differently than a regular rancher can, or even a regular wealthy local landowner can.

I'm also not saying that rich people shouldn't own land either.  But there is the question of what is "rich", and what is super rich.  It's one thing making money in your community and then entering agriculture, a story that's fairly common and has been for a long time.  It's another making money far, far away, and then coming into the country you are not from, are not part of, and are not of, and buying that land up.  

Indeed, an argument could be made that's a sort of colonialism.

I.e, if I had lots of money (I don't) and bought ranchland in my home state, well, I'm from there and have to live there and people can and will give me an earful at the gas station or cafe, or whatever.  But if I made piles of money and then bought up farm ground in North Carolina, and hired people to run it for me, and stopped in from time to time, I wouldn't really have any signficant connection with the community where my ground was at all.  Indeed, I don't know what people in North Carolina think, and by and large, on most days, I don't care all that much about it either. They aren't going to give me an earful at the gas station.

No wonder, therefore, the jury reacted the way it did in Carbon County.  That jury didn't want to be told that they had to bow to somebody in North Carolina.

Footnotes:

1. This is a classic case of finding yourself in a fight in a time and place not of your choosing.  This legal issue has been around for years, and has come up at least once before, but now its back in a major way, with the standard bearor for the agricultural organizations being an out of stater. The Stockgrowers and the Woolgrowers have to enter the contest or feel comfortable with no voice at all, but they sure wouldn't have wanted it to come up this way.

Related Threads:

Lex Anteinternet: "This land is my land, but shouldn't be your land"...

"This land is my land, but shouldn't be your land". Misbegotten hostilitiy to ranchers using the public lands

Holscher's Hub: Smoke from the Mullen Fire, October 4, 2020

Holscher's Hub: Smoke from the Mullen Fire, October 4, 2020:

Smoke from the Mullen Fire, October 4, 2020

Sunday Morning Scene. Churches of the West: Unknown church near Ft. Fred Steele, Carbon County, Wyoming.

Churches of the West: Unknown church near Ft. Fred Steele, Carbon County...:

Unknown church near Ft. Fred Steele, Carbon County, Wyoming.

This abandoned church sits in a ranch yard just outside of Ft. Fred Steele in Carbon County, Wyoming.  I have no other information on it, other than it appears quite old.

Echos of Parco. Sinclair Wyoming.

 Echos of Parco. Sinclair Wyoming.:

This is linked over here, as it fits in quite well with the theme of the blog.  Parco was a company town, as noted below, built by a refining company in 1924-25.  The luxury hotel was built by the company on the then fairly new Lincoln Highway, and the town no doubt benefited as it was also a stop on the Union Pacific.  Only seven miles away from the larger and older town of Rawlins, the Interstate Highway bypasses it and its a remnant of its former self.

Not too many people stop at Sinclair who are just passing through.  But at one time that wasn't true.  And that's why the town has what was once a luxury hotel (now a Baptist church), a spacious park, really nice tennis courts, and the like.  Only the sign on the hotel remains, as well as a historical monument, to remind us that Sinclair is the town's second name.  It was originally Parco, a company town founded by the founder of what is now the Sinclair Refinery, the Producers & Refiners Corporation.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Private Chapel, Pathfinder Ranch, Wyoming

Churches of the West: Private Chapel, Pathfinder Ranch, Wyoming:

Private churches or chapels were once common in England, but they're rare in the United States, and particularly rare in the Western United States, but here's an example, a private chapel on the large Pathfinder Ranch in Natrona and Carbon Counties, Wyoming.

These photographs were taken from just off the highway, when I had to stop to make a cell phone call, and are taken with two different lenses, one being the Pentax lens my K-x came equipped with, and the other being a Vivitar telephoto lens built for a Pentax film camera. Pentax digital DSLs will use the old Pentax bayonet mount lenses if the camera is set on the manual settings.

Monday at the Bar: Today In Wyoming's History: October 20. The Senften Murder and Justice in World War One.

From:  Today In Wyoming's History: October 20:

1917   Louis Senften  was murdered near Leo.  This resulted in his neighbor, John Leibig, who was the only one to witness the death, being accused of murder.

The accusations against Leibig seem to have been motivated, at least in part, by his being of German origin.  Senften had just purchased his ranch after a long effort to do so but there were details concerning that purchased that may have caused Leibig's neighbors to wish him gone.  Be that as it may, he was acquitted of murder but was also held on an additional eleven counts of espionage, a fairly absurd accusation against somebody who lived in such a remote location.  Leibig, perhaps wanting to simply get past the matter, entered a guilty plea to those charges as part of a plea bargain.  He was accordingly sentenced to a year and a half in a Federal Penitentiary, but President Wilson commuted the sentence to one year.  The short length of the sentence would suggest that both the Court and the President doubted the espionage claims' veracity.

Wyoming's U.S. Attorney continued Quixotic efforts to strip Leibig of his citizenship until 1922, although he had in fact lost it by operation of his sentence.  He ultimately would relocate to Colorado after being released from the Federal Penitentiary at Ft. Leavenworth Kansas.

More can be read about his trial on the WyomingHistory.org webiste.

This sort of thing, the miscarriage of justice directed at foreign nationals from the Central Powers, or even just from the more exotic regions of Europe, was unfortunately quite common during World War One.  Germans or Austrians who expressed doubts about the war were exposed to such an extent that many regions of the country that were strongly German in heritage made an effort to disguise that during the war.  This succeeded so well that many such areas never revived German heritage events and German practices after the war's end.  

And Coal Gassification bites the dust in Carbon County.

A memorial to the men who lost their lives in the Number One Mine at Hanna, Wyoming. The 1903 and 1908 Mine No. 1 explosions claimed 169 and 59 lives respectively, with the majority of the 59 killed in the 1908 disaster being men who were killed in an explosion that occurred after the first 1908 explosion.  The bodies of 201 men from the 1903 and 1908 disaster remain buried in the underground mine.  From earlier coal mining days in Carbon County.

 

Not that this is really news, DKRW's project to build a plant in Carbon County had been in trouble for quite some time.  The economics of it, however, just weren't working out.

That coal can be a starting point for the processing of gasoline, jet fuel and diesel fuel, is hardly news of any kind.  It's been well known for a long time. As is often pointed out in the discussion of this topic, the Germans relied extensively on synthetic, i.e., coal based, fuels during World War Two.  And they aren't the only ones to have relied upon it at one point or another either.  South Africa, in its later embargoed period, and Rhodesia (from South Africa) relied upon synthetic fuel well after the Germans had.  But that should say something about the economics of it.  The Germans relied upon it as they had to.  Outside of Romania and southern Russia, they had no other petroleum fuel sources and couldn't import anything.  Likewise, South Africa and Rhodesia, by the 1970s, were in the same situation.  In other words, economically, converting coal into motor fuel has tended to only make sense if petroleum was basically unavailable.  It has always been cheaper to simply start with petroleum oil, which of course is well on its way to being gasoline, diesel fuel, or jet fuel.  Indeed, in rare instances, such as in Indonesia, some of the stuff is so far advanced towards being fuel oil it doesn't need to be refined at all.

DKRW's problem in Wyoming was that in order for the Carbon County effort to make sense, petroleum had to be sufficiently high, while coal was sufficiently low, that they could undertake the effort and make money at it. Well, coal's pretty cheap, but the price of oil has just been too darned low. So the plans have been shelved.

It should be noted, however, that the coal isn't going anywhere and this might conceivably be the future of coal in the state, at some point.

Blog Mirror: Today In Wyoming's History. Bad economic news

Today In Wyoming's History:  March 23  2016:  For the first time since 2000, Wyoming's unemployment rate is higher than the national average.

The unemployment rate only comes in a little above 5%, which shows how high the rate of employment is statistically in the country right now.   This is high enough nationwide that we fit into what used to be regarded as technical full employment.  It's never possible to have 100% employment.  In recent years, however, figures in this area have been regarded in a negative light and some claim the actual nationwide rate of employment is higher.

At any rate, the real unemployment rate in Wyoming is undoubtedly higher.  Natrona County has a 7.2% unemployment rate and Carbon County has a 6% unemployment rate.  Both counties are energy dependent for their economies, as is of course the state generally.  Given as Wyoming had a high migrant employment rate in recent years the high unemployment rate now probably reflects a significant degree of reverse migration, so the actual rate is likely much higher than what we're now seeing reported.