Idiotic idea. Certain rights regarding land need to be inalienable; air and water high among them. This business of auctioning off "mineral" or "natural resource" rights without reference to the people who live and work on the surface of the Earth distorts natural property and inhabitance rights. It is counterintuitive to normal buyers of property to divide rights inherent to the use and occupation of space, and leaves us blinded to what, in fact, we are buying when we purchase land. Further dividing these rights from public lands leaves the citizen with no recourse to use and enjoyment of what is supposedly OUR land. At least when it is held in government stewardship, we have recourse via democratic and legal processes to oppose undesirable decisions. This proposal, however, seeks once again to privatize the goods and benefits of community property while socializing costs and losses. This is CORRUPTION pure and simple.