A federal judge has put on hold until early January a lawsuit over a disputed energy lease near Montana’s Glacier National Park.
The Associated Press reports U.S. District Judge Richard Leon today granted a stay that was sought by both sides in the case. The Interior Department last month said it plans to cancel the 6,200-acre lease held by Baton Rouge-based Solenex, which it was granted in 1982 on land considered sacred to the Blackfoot tribes of the U.S. and Canada.
Attorneys for the Interior Department and Solenex say they need more time to try to resolve the case outside of court. Solenex sued in 2013 after facing repeated delays from federal officials as it seeks to develop the site in the Badger-Two Medicine area just south of Glacier.
Prior to today’s ruling, the lease could have been canceled as early as next Friday, according to court documents filed by the Interior Department last month. 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.
Government attorneys contend 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.
William Perry Pendley with the Mountain States Legal Foundation, which is representing Solenex, has said 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.
Solenex would have to be compensated if a cancellation occurs, Pendley contends. 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.
