If you can’t get tar sands oil and natural gas out of the ground here in the United States and Canada without access to a special, almost magical, round quartz called frac sand, which is easily accessible here in WI in limited supply, then why are the citizens of WI selling it so cheaply? We have the prime sand that companies like Exxon Mobile and BP must have in order to reap billions in profits each year. Why don’t we benefit from this sand at the town and county level?

A barrel of light crude oil weighs about 290 pounds and is worth about $100 in today’s market. There are about 7 barrels of oil per ton. That makes a ton of oil worth just slightly less than $700 per ton.“Lucky” land owners get almost $2/Ton (a measly 0.3%). The rest of us get the bills for road repair and we have our quiet, country lives disrupted by incessant large truck traffic, light pollution, noise pollution, hillside removal, explosions, back-up beepers and more.

Don’t you think it is time to call your state legislators and ask them why WI doesn’t have a mineral depletion tax. It would benefit us instead of multinational oil companies? Alaska taxes every barrel of oil 25% and pays annual checks to every Alaska citizen of as much as $2000 annually, and they have no income tax. Call now.