Ag secretary: Cancel oil, gas leases on sacred land

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says an oil and gas lease in the Badger-Two Medicine area of the Rocky Mountain Front should be canceled, a decision welcomed by the Blackfeet Tribe and environmental groups but criticized by an attorney for the developer.

Vilsack made the recommendation in support of canceling the controversial Hall Creek natural gas exploration lease in a letter he sent Friday to Sally Jewell, secretary of the Interior Department.

The Interior Department is expected to make the final decision by Nov. 23.

The Forest Service is part of Vilsack’s Agriculture Department. The BLM is part of Jewell’s Interior.

The BLM issued the lease on the recommendation of the Forest Service in 1982 and it’s been a source of contention between the Blackfeet Tribe and environmental groups and developer Solenex LLC of Louisiana ever since.

The Badger-Two Medicine is a 130,000-acre area managed by the Lewis and Clark National Forest and part of the 165,588-acre Traditional Cultural District that includes portions of the Flathead National Forest and the Blackfeet Indian Reservation.

The area is eligible for the National Record of Historic Places for its association with culturally important spirits, heroes and historic figures central to Blackfeet religion, traditional life ways and practices, and the Blackfeet consider it sacred. It’s also eligible for significant archaeological features.

In the letter to Jewell, Vilsack said he made the recommendation to cancel the Hall Creek lease and others based on the recommendation of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, which concluded in September that natural gas exploration, if it leads to development, would result in irreparable degradation of the historic values of a landscape it described as “virtually unmarred by modern development.”

Vilsack also cited adverse effects the Forest Service said the development would have on the land.

The development poses adverse effects to the Blackfeet traditional cultural district “in ways that cannot by fully mitigated,” Vilsack wrote. Other leases besides the Solenex lease should be canceled as well, he said.

Since the Solenex lease was issued in 1982, Vilsack wrote, there have been policy developments in regard to historic properties with traditional religious and cultural significance to Indian tribes in addition to federal-tribal relations.

“The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service has worked diligently to comply with the new requirements by pursuing oral histories and contracting supporting archeological and ethnographical work, which gradually revealed the unique and special nature of the Badger-Two Medicine TCD (Traditional Cultural District),” Vilsack wrote.

As the Forest Service’s knowledge of the uniqueness of the Badger-Two Medicine TCD increased, so did its management of the land, he said. He noted that the agency made the Badger-Two Medicine area unavailable for future leasing in 1997 and later limited motor vehicle access in the area.

Harry Barnes, chairman of the Blackfeet Business Council, said in a news release that the Forest Service reaffirmed what the Blackfeet had said all along.

“Drilling for oil in the Badger-Two Medicine would cause irreparable damage,” Barnes said. “We demand the cancellation of all illegal leases and the permanent protection of our sacred lands.”

Solenex is proposing a single exploratory oil and gas well including 5.7 miles of new road construction, a temporary bridge across the Two Medicine River and a four-acre drill pad.

Solenex President Sidney Longwell acquired the lease in 1982, and his application to drill was OK’d in 1993 but federal agencies later suspended exploration activity in the area. He’s suing the federal agencies over what he says are unreasonable delays in allowing him to exercise his lease.

William Perry Pendley, president of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, which is representing Solenex in its lawsuit, said there’s no lawful manner in which the lease can be canceled.

“The Obama administration may not like there’s a lease issued there, but it was issued,” he said.

The area where the exploration is planned likely has a significant amount of natural gas, and that’s why Solenex hopes to explore there, he said. The delay in decision-making by the federal government, he added, has left an “American citizen spinning in the wind.”

“Pretty disgusting,” Pendley said.

Also on Friday, the National Wildlife Federation, Montana Wildlife Federation, Montana Wilderness Association, CMR Backcountry Horsemen, Missouri Breaks Audubon Society, National Parks Conservation Association, Pikuni Traditionalist Association and Brave Dog Society, represented by Earthjustice, filed a motion in U.S. District Court in Great Falls to reopen a lawsuit against the Hall Creek Well.

The Pikuni Traditionalist Association and Brave Dog Society are Blackfeet tribal groups.

The motion to reopen the 1993 lawsuit against the lease was so the groups could be in a position to move as quickly as possible if Badger-Two Medicine development is allowed to proceed, Preso said.

“We’ve asked the court to move expeditiously to reopen the case,” said Tim Presso, an attorney with Earthjustice. “We’ll see what the court does.”

The original lawsuit was filed in 1993.

It challenged a 1981 Forest Service decision recommending oil and gas leases issued by the BLM be allowed across much of Lewis and Clark National Forest, including the Badger-Two medicine region, according to papers filed Friday in federal court.

The plaintiffs alleged violations of the National Environmental Policy Act in connection to the issuance of the Hall Creek lease and drilling permit, as well as violations of the National Historic Preservation Act.

But on June 30, 1993, before the plaintiff’s claims could be heard, the BLM ordered a suspension of operations and production on the Hall Creek lease to provide Congress a chance to consider legislation to conserve the area. Later, in 1996, the suspension was continued to review whether the area was eligible for the National Register of Historic Places.

In response to the suspension, the court issued an order in 1997 that the case be administratively terminated.

Presso said the motion to reopen the case was filed because the Interior Department is expected Nov. 23 decision by the Interior Department whether it will allow the Hall Creek drilling to proceed.

In 2013, Solenex filed a complaint in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia alleging that Interior and Agriculture departments violated the Administrative Procedure Act by refusing to lift the suspension that prohibits the company from moving forward.

The court in that case found that the Agriculture and Interior departments had unreasonably delayed reaching a final determination regarding lifting the suspension of the Hall Creek lease and said a decision needed to be made by Nov. 23.

If the suspension is lifted, Preso said, work could begin as soon as July 1, 2016.

The D.C. lawsuit involves only the government that issued the lease and the industry that wants to develop the well, Preso said.

“There is nobody at the table representing any other perspective,” Preso said.

The Montana case would involve those who oppose industrial uses for the area.