Transcript
Zach Goldbaum (0:00)
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Auctioneer (0:16)
Again. 2560 acres of it, folks. It's in Grand County. Is it worth a two dollar start for this one? Would you be divided to two? Biddy two? Biddy two. I have two now. Two and a quarter, two and a half and 275.
Zach Goldbaum (0:28)
It's December 19th, 2008, and the US Bureau of Land Management, aka the BLM, is holding an auction in Salt Lake City, Utah. They're selling off parcels for oil drilling and development. The room is filled with guys known as landmen. You might know the term from the Billy Bob Thornton TV show, conveniently called Landman. Essentially, they're middlemen who negotiate land rights for big oil and gas companies.
Tim DeChristopher (0:53)
They were kind of a mix of, you know, what you think of as like a standard businessman. To those that kind of like tried on the cowboy aesthetic, that's Tim DeChristopher.
Zach Goldbaum (1:03)
He's also in the room, just 27 at the time, with a shaved head and light stubble. As the auctioneer brings up new parcels, Tim starts raising his paddle. It's got his assigned bidder number on it, number 70. At first he's bidding higher prices, but always bails when they get too high. But then about halfway through, he changes his tactics. He decides he's not going to let anyone outbid him. So he keeps bidding going higher and higher until the auctioneer calls out his paddle number.
Tim DeChristopher (1:39)
When he said sold to bidder number 70, a lot of heads in the room turned and looked at me.
Zach Goldbaum (1:47)
Then Tim does it again and again. One parcel, then two, three, four, five. Now the landman in the room really stood. Start looking at him funny. The oil industry is a small world and most of them know each other, but they don't know Tim.
Tim DeChristopher (2:08)
So after I won 14 parcels in a row, then the auctioneer said, oh, we're going to take a five minute break. And as soon as he said that, there was somebody standing next to me with a badge who said, can we go talk outside?
Zach Goldbaum (2:22)
He ushers Tim out into the hallway and peppers him with questions. Tim's not one of their normal bidders, and the official wants to know how Tim intends to pay for the $1.8 million worth of leases he's just won. But here's the thing. He has no intention of paying for any of it, because Tim DeChristopher is not a landman. He is a climate activist. From audible orig welcome back to fictionals. I'm zach goldbaum. And this is lawless planet. Each week we tell a new story about the true crimes fueling the climate crisis and the people fighting to save the planet or destroy it.
