SHERIDAN - Western states need to band together and oppose a federal move to disregard state laws protecting the rights of landowners affected by mineral development, an advocate for landowners in Wyoming said.

Laurie Goodman of the Landowners Association of Wyoming told a Montana panel Thursday that the Bureau of Land Management was attempting to avoid applying a new Wyoming law to lands where it owns the mineral rights.

The Wyoming law gives surface owners more bargaining power and rights when dealing with oil and gas producers seeking to extract the minerals owned by someone else under their land. When the land surface and minerals underneath are owned by two different parties, it is known as a split estate.

Wyoming has 11 million acres of split-estate land where the federal government owns the minerals.

Goodman told the subcommittee of the Montana Legislature's Environmental Quality Council that there are about 38 million acres across the West where the federal government owns the minerals and someone else owns the surface land.

The Montana panel, consisting of state lawmakers and private citizens, held a hearing in Sheridan about Wyoming's new split estate law. The panel was created by the 2005 Montana Legislature to study surface use agreements for all mineral developments, and reclamation and bonding for coal-bed methane operations.

Sen. Mike Wheat, D-Bozeman, said the panel was trying to see if Montana's own split-estate law should be strengthened.

Wyoming's law took effect July 1. But the BLM has told the state that it doesn't believe the law applies to federally owned minerals under land it doesn't own.

"The impact of that would be to eliminate the state's ability to regulate rights for private property owners," Goodman said. "Unbelievable. Really, it's unbelievable."

Sen. Dan McGee, R-Laurel, said it sounds to him that the BLM is relying on following federal law that dates back to the birth of the nation rather than newer state laws that deal with modern issues.

"It will be interesting to see how they either come to the table with us or don't," McGee said. "It's interesting to see how it's currently playing out in Wyoming. This is the first we've heard about that."

But he also knows that "what we do on the state level can only go so far," he said.

"I believe in the end there will need to be a federal address to this as well," McGee said. "I'm very clear in my mind that that's going to have to happen."

Rep. Rosie Berger, R-Big Horn, who was among the leaders in the Wyoming Legislature for the split-estate law, said the matter likely will end up in court.

Berger said the Wyoming law was a good piece of legislation that should apply to private land with federal minerals.

"We did not feel it was necessary to eliminate those federal lands in our legislation because we still have a private owner on the surface," she said.

The Montana panel also took testimony from a number of ranchers, minerals owners, conservationists, producer representatives and landowners - all with varying opinions on how the state should proceed on split estates.

Clint McRae, who runs a cow-calf operation near Colstrip, Mont., said the panel needed to address surface owners' concerns about the length of notice they get about coming oil and gas activity as well as dust control, road conditions, weeds, water and other issues.

But Hugh Kendrick, whose family has land and mineral interests in southeast Montana, said the rights of mineral owners to have their minerals extracted shouldn't be usurped to protect surface owners.

The panel, which has held meetings previously in Havre and Helena, has additional meetings scheduled in January and February in Helena, Sidney and Billings.