The Unpacking Future Packers Countdown is a countdown of 100 prospects who the Green Bay Packers could select in the 2026 NFL draft.

Brian Gutekunst has consistently invested in the offensive line. Since taking over as general manager of the Green Bay Packers in 2018, Gutekunst has drafted 17 offensive linemen. Out of those 17 picks, 12 of them were on Day 3.

With the Packers needing to bolster the depth of their offensive line, Gutekunst could once again target an offensive lineman on Day 3 of the 2026 NFL Draft, with a potential target being Caden Barnett. The Wyoming offensive linemen checks in at No. 23 in the Unpacking Future Packers Countdown.

A native of Texas and a high school offensive tackle, Barnett redshirted during his first season at Wyoming. In 2022, he started one game at right tackle. The following season, Barnett started 10 games at right tackle. In 2024, Barnett started 12 games at right tackle. During his final season at Wyoming, Barnett started 12 games at right guard.

ROCK SPRINGS — Retired Marine Corps Col. Brent Bien brought his second campaign for Wyoming governor to Sweetwater County April 1 and 2. He outlined a sweeping conservative platform that calls for eliminating residential property taxes, abandoning electronic voting machines, halting wind energy expansion and overhauling public education.

Bien, a University of Wyoming engineering graduate and combat veteran, told the crowd he first entered the race after Gov. Mark Gordon shut down the state during the COVID-19 pandemic and the legislature failed to act during a subsequent special election.

“This was never a bucket list thing for me,” Bien said. “But I do understand the value and worth of our freedom, an I am willing to go to the mat for it.”

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Taxes and Spending

Bien argued Wyoming has a spending problem, not a revenue problem, and called for the states first full budget audit since 1989. He proposed eliminating the residential property tax, cutting fuel tax, and reducing the sales tax by 1%. He estimated the total combined reduction at roughly $1.1 billion annually.

He said Wyoming’s approximately $34 billion in reserves generate nearly $1.9 billion in interest annually. Bien said that the interest alone is enough to cover essential services without touching the principal.

“Everybody in here deserves to know the final resting place of every tax dollar.” he said.

Energy

Bien is sharply critical of what he described as production restrictions under the current administration, saying Wyoming oil output has fallen between 65% and 70% and mining activity has dropped 18% under Gordon. He pledged to streamline permitting for oil, gas and coal development and said he would oppose all new wind energy projects in the state.

“My answer is unequivocally no,” he said of new wind proposals.”I’ll do everything to stop all that.”

He also called for eliminating carbon capture subsides and said he wants to reorient Wyoming’s energy policy back toward the industries he said build the state, coal, oil, gas and trona mining.

Elections

Bien said he would not vote to certify a Wyoming election so long as the state uses electronic tabulation machines. He said the official vote should be determined exclusively by hand tabulation of all cast paper ballots.

“It’s the government’s job to gain the trust of the citizenry, not the other way around,” he said.

Public Lands and Agriculture

Bien raised concerns over what he called the rewilding of Wyoming, describing biodiversity conservation contracts that pay ranchers to take land out of agricultural production under nondisclosure agreements. He identified Fremont County as a focal point of those efforts.

He said he would defend Wyoming’s water rights, oppose surrendering additional allocations under an expected renegotiation of the Colorado River Compact and push for wolves to be delisted so Wyoming hunters can manage predator populations without outside intervention.

Education

Bien said Wyoming spends roughly $22,000 per student annually, about twice neighboring Idaho, yet produces test scores he called unacceptable. He called for a full audit of education spending, reinstatement of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools by executive order and elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion curricula. He also said he wants daily physical education required through the senior year of high school.

“Until we’re number one in this nation, we should never accept anything less,” he said.

by Dustin Bleizeffer, WyoFile

State and federal officials are seeking public comment on the proposed Bridger Pipeline Expansion project to carry Canadian crude from the border in Phillips County, Montana, to a terminal near Guernsey.

The massive 36-inch-diameter pipeline would span 647 miles and move about 550,000 barrels of crude oil daily. The proposed route includes about 210 miles across Crook, Weston, Niobrara, Goshen and Platte counties in eastern Wyoming, according to developer Bridger Pipeline Expansion. The company is a subsidiary of Casper-based Bridger Pipeline LLC, which owns a network of oil pipelines, including the Belle Fourche and Butte pipelines that connect North Dakota, Montana and eastern Wyoming oilfields to the Guernsey storage and interconnect hub.

Bridger Pipeline is owned by True Cos., which has had several significant pipeline spills, including a 45,000-gallon diesel spill in eastern Wyoming in 2022 and an incident that spewed more than 50,000 gallons of Bakken crude into the Yellowstone River in Montana in 2015.

The U.S. Bureau of Management is the lead federal regulatory authority “to review potential impacts of the entire project to ensure environmental, cultural and community considerations are fully evaluated,” according to a BLM press release. The company has also applied to the Montana Department of Environmental Quality for a “certificate of compliance” required under the state’s Major Facility Siting Act, which triggers a parallel environmental review under Montana’s Environmental Policy Act.

The 30-day public scoping and comment period initiated this week will help both federal and Montana officials identify potential impacts and alternatives. The agencies will co-host one virtual and three in-person public meetings, to be announced at a later date (check here for updates), they said.

The Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality “will serve as a participating agency” in the BLM’s review, according to the department.

You can learn more about the environmental review for the project here, and choose the “participate now” tab to submit a comment.

Keystone Light?

Some locals in eastern Wyoming refer to the project as “Keystone Light,” a Niobrara County rancher told WyoFile. The name, borrowed from a beer, is a nod to the notion that the Bridger Pipeline Expansion would help fill the industry’s aspiration for the Keystone XL oil pipeline project abandoned in 2021.

Amid major opposition and protests, President Joe Biden — on his first day in office — cited his plans to address climate change by revoking a Trump-era permit for Keystone XL, which was required for the border crossing. The Bridger Pipeline Expansion will also require a presidential permit for the international border crossing, according to the BLM.

Similar to the Bridger Pipeline Expansion, Keystone XL would have transported Canadian oil-sands crude, but was larger — designed for up to 830,000 barrels per day. Its proposed route also differed, crossing in Montana and spanning portions of South Dakota and Nebraska.

One major advantage of the Bridger project, according to company officials, is that the Canada-Montana-Wyoming route follows many existing rights-of-way. About half of the route in Montana is parallel to existing pipelines, and a little more than half of the 210-mile route in Wyoming follows existing pipeline corridors, according to a project description provided by the BLM. 

Additionally, the developer owns much of that existing infrastructure: “The Project would parallel Bridger‐owned infrastructure for roughly 138 miles in Montana and 100 miles in Wyoming.”

The route includes about 6 miles of BLM-managed lands in northeast Wyoming, as well as about 5 miles of Thunder Basin National Grassland, managed by the U.S. Forest Service. The federal review includes the Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Construction could begin by July 2027 and would employ about 400 workers for each of four stages of development, according to a BLM planning document.

Health and environmental concerns

In 2023, Bridger Pipeline and its subsidiary Belle Fourche Pipeline Company paid $12.5 million to resolve penalties related to a series of pipeline spills and alleged violations of the Clean Water Act and federal pipeline safety laws.

The company’s track record, combined with allegedly lax oversight by state regulators, is cause for concern, said Jill Morrison, who serves on the board of the Sheridan-based landowner advocacy group Powder River Basin Resource Council.

“They’ve had a lot of spills and breaks,” Morrison told WyoFile. “Are they going to up their game to be more on top of ensuring we don’t have spills and breaks like other pipelines?”

For its part, Bridger Pipeline says it has launched an artificial leak detection company, FlowState, that monitors its pipeline systems. FlowState was awarded a $2 million Energy Matching Funds state grant in 2024.

Parent company True Cos. created FlowState because it couldn’t find a leak-detection system on the market that satisfied its needs, “so we built one,” Bridger Pipeline spokesman Bill Salvin told WyoFile.

“We have had some instances where our pipelines have leaked — that’s simply a fact,” Salvin said, adding that some of the company’s leaks were related to outdated practices that have since been improved industrywide. “Every one of those incidents is terribly unfortunate. That’s how we view it: We don’t want any [spill] incidents.

“What’s most important to us,” Salvin continued, “is when those incidents happen, that we respond very quickly and with everything we have, and that we learn from them so they don’t happen again. And that’s why we’ve got FlowState today.”

This article was originally published by WyoFile and is republished here with permission. WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.

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