{"id":12674,"date":"2017-01-11T09:04:33","date_gmt":"2017-01-11T17:04:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/us-cancels-final-energy-leases-in-area-sacred-to-tribes\/"},"modified":"2017-01-11T09:04:33","modified_gmt":"2017-01-11T17:04:33","slug":"us-cancels-final-energy-leases-in-area-sacred-to-tribes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/us-cancels-final-energy-leases-in-area-sacred-to-tribes\/","title":{"rendered":"US cancels final energy leases in area sacred to tribes"},"content":{"rendered":"

BILLINGS, Mont. \u2014<\/strong> U.S. officials on Tuesday announced the cancellation of the final two oil and gas leases in a wilderness area bordering Glacier National Park that\u2019s sacred to the Blackfoot tribes of Montana and Canada, more than three decades after the tribes said the leases were illegally sold.<\/p>\n

Lease owners in Nebraska and Texas were notified of the cancellations in a letter from Deputy Interior Secretary Michael Conner and offered refunds of about $30,000 each.<\/p>\n

The move is subject to a potential court challenge. A lawsuit against another lease cancellation in the area last year is pending before U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n

The undeveloped leases were issued in the 1980s in the Badger Two-Medicine area, the site of the creation story for Montana\u2019s Blackfeet Nation and the Blackfoot tribes of Canada. Tribal members had argued that the leases were sold improperly and without due consideration of the area\u2019s cultural significance.<\/p>\n

Blackfeet Tribal Chairman Harry Barnes said his people were grateful for the cancellation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis area is like a church to our people,\u201d Barnes said. \u201cWe\u2019ve lived for 30 years under the threat that it might be industrialized.\u201d<\/p>\n

The leases canceled Tuesday were held by W.A. Moncrief with Moncrief Oil and Montex Drilling of Fort Worth, Texas, and the J.G Kluthe Trust of Elgin, Nebraska.<\/p>\n

The cancellations were not voluntary, and it was uncertain if the owners planned to challenge them, said Alyse Backus, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department\u2019s Bureau of Land Management<\/p>\n

Representatives of Moncrief and the Kluthe trust did not immediately respond to telephone messages left by The Associated Press seeking comment.<\/p>\n

The Badger-Two Medicine area is part of the Rocky Mountain Front, a scenic expanse of forested mountains that\u2019s been subject to a long campaign to block oil and gas development and mining.<\/p>\n

Congress in 2006 provided tax breaks and other incentives that prompted 29 lease holders to relinquish their drilling rights, but some leaseholders declined the offers.<\/p>\n

In November, 15 leases in the area were given up voluntarily by Devon Energy.<\/p>\n

Still, the possibility lingers of limited drilling in the Badger-Two Medicine area. Another lease, canceled in March and now subject to the pending court challenge, was held by Solenex LLC of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.<\/p>\n

Solenex still wants to drill and is represented by the Mountain States Legal Foundation, a conservative property rights law firm. It said the lease was issued properly and that federal officials for decades have unfairly delayed drilling.<\/p>\n

An attorney for several conservation groups that have intervened in the litigation said the company\u2019s arguments are not supported by U.S. Supreme Court decisions in similar cases.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe case is strong that the government has the authority to cancel the lease,\u201d said Tim Preso with Earthjustice in Bozeman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BILLINGS, Mont. \u2014 U.S. officials on Tuesday announced the cancellation of the final two oil and gas leases in a wilderness area bordering Glacier National Park that\u2019s sacred to the Blackfoot tribes of Montana and Canada, more than three decades after the tribes said the leases were illegally sold. Lease owners in Nebraska and Texas […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":12675,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-12674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12674"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=12674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}