A federal judge delivered a win for a Baton Rouge company today by pressing U.S. officials to explain why it’s taken three decades to decide on its proposal to drill for natural gas just outside Glacier National Park in an area considered sacred by some Indian tribes in Montana and Canada.
The Associated Press reports a frustrated U.S. District Judge Richard Leon called the delay “troubling” and a “nightmare” during a recent court hearing. He ordered the Interior and Agriculture departments to report back to him with any other example of where they have “dragged their feet” for so long.
“This is no way to run a government. No way to run a government,” Leon told government attorney Ruth Ann Storey, according to a transcript of the June 10 hearing in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.
At issue in the case is a 6,200-acre energy lease in northwest Montana’s Badger-Two Medicine National Forest, immediately south of Glacier. Owned by Solenex of Baton Rouge, the lease has been suspended since the 1990s.
Solenex, represented by the conservative Mountain States Legal Foundation of Colorado, sued in 2013 to overturn the suspension. It wants to begin drilling for gas this summer.
The Badger-Two Medicine area is the home of the creation story of the four Blackfoot tribes in Canada and Montana and the Sun Dance that is central to their religion. The land is part of the Lewis and Clark National Forest, but it is not on Montana’s Blackfeet Reservation.
Blackfoot leaders have asked Interior Secretary Sally Jewell to cancel the leases. The Interior Department issued the energy lease to Solenex in 1982, and the Forest Service in 1996 asked for it to be suspended so the agency could perform a historic preservation survey of the site. That was completed in 2012, but there’s been no final decision on whether the lease should remain in place.
Dozens of oil and gas leases were originally sold in the area but over the years most have been retired or surrendered. Only 18 suspended leases remain, including the Solenex lease. Forest Service spokesman Dave Cunningham says he is not aware of a timeline for a final decision on the lease proposal.
