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likely be much less than that," he told a legislative panel.
• The Legislature's Executive Board last month decided to create a special committee that will study the expected benefits and problems that would be caused by an oil and gas boom.
• The board, which handles management and administrative matters for the Legislature, decided Monday that the special committee should focus on taxes and the problems caused when the land and the oil beneath it are owned by different people.
• Surface landowners often don't own the rights to the oil beneath their property. They complain they get few financial benefits while having to put up with roads and drilling rigs that disrupt their farming and ranching operations.
• The legislative panel also will likely travel to northwestern South Dakota's small

oil patch and North Dakota's much larger oil production area.
• After North Dakota's oil industry began to boom in the past decade, South Dakota started an effort to encourage more oil and gas exploration in the state. Part of that effort has been to put drilling and geological information online to help companies decide where to explore in South Dakota.
• However, officials in North Dakota have advised South Dakota to begin preparing for both the benefits and problems that will accompany increased

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