Attorneys representing Baton Rouge-based Solenex LLC say they will fight the Interior Department’s plans to cancel a long-suspended oil and gas drilling lease near Glacier National Park that’s located on land considered sacred to the Blackfoot tribes of the U.S. and Canada.
The Associated Press reports the lease could be canceled as early as Dec. 11, according to court documents filed by the Interior Department on Monday. Tribal leaders say such a move would make up for a wrong done to them in 1982, when the government issued the lease without consulting the tribes.
In the filings on Monday, government attorneys agree, saying the lease was improperly sold more than three decades ago, in part because an environmental study did not consider the impact of drilling on the tribes.
But William Perry Pendley with the Mountain States Legal Foundation, which is representing Solenex, says it was “insane” for the government to suggest that 33 years after the leases were issued—and after four studies of the Solenex proposal—that the government’s actions violated the law.
“The government does not have the legal authority to cancel the lease,” Pendley says.
Solenex would have to be compensated if a cancellation occurs, Pendley adds. A similar situation involving leases canceled in Michigan’s Nordhouse Dunes Wilderness Area resulted in an award of about $100 million to the owners of those leases.
Solenex sued the government in 2013 to force a decision after the dispute dragged on for decades. The case is before U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, who has expressed repeated frustration at how long it’s taken for the government to resolve the issue.
The 6,200-acre lease is in northwestern Montana’s Badger Two-Medicine area, which is the site of the creation story for the Blackfoot tribes of southern Canada and the Blackfeet Nation of Montana. It is just west of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. Blackfeet leaders say Monday’s court filing confirms their view that drilling could not be done without disturbing the spiritual power of the Badger Two-Medicine, located within the Lewis and Clark National Forest.
The Associated Press has the full story.
