Years before he became President Donald Trump’s pick for the nation’s top court, Judge Neil Gorsuch delivered some disquieting news to ranchers who were fighting oil drillers.

“When you own property in the West you don’t always own everything from the surface to the center of the Earth,” Gorsuch wrote for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in a 2014 case, Entek GRB v. Stull Ranches.