U.S. judge restores oil drilling lease on land sacred to Canada’s Blackfoot tribes
But U.S. District Judge Richard Leon said Jewell lacked the authority to withdraw the lease so many years after it was sold and after several prior studies examined the environmental and other impacts of drilling in the area.He ordered Interior Department officials to reinstate the lease and issue a drilling permit to Solenex LLC, the Louisiana company that holds the lease. Leon issued a similar order in 2018 that was later overturned on appeal.
The Badger-Two-Medicine is adjacent to Glacier National Park and is the site of the creation story of the Blackfoot tribes of southern Canada and Montana’s Blackfeet Nation. The Blackfeet had intervened in the case on the side of the government, and tribal Historic Preservation Officer John Murray said the fight against drilling would continue.
“We’ve lived under this kind of reckless threat to our sacred lands for decades, and we will never surrender to roads and drill rigs in the Badger-Two Medicine,” Murray said.Trump signs order which could reopen offshore oil and gas drilling in restricted areas – Apr 28, 2017 Solenex founder Sidney Longwell, who died last year, bought the lease but never drilled on the site. Instead, Longwell confronted major bureaucratic delays within the U.S. departments of Interior and Agriculture that prompted the company to sue in 2013.Interior department officials did not have an immediate reaction to the ruling, spokesperson Melissa Schwartz said. A Solenex representative could not be reached for comment.
Judge Leon criticized government officials for adopting the Blackfeet Tribe’s position that drilling had the potential to “affect the power and spirituality” of the area without explaining what those effects were. He also rejected the claim from officials that the impacts to tribal resources could not be lessened if drilling occurred.
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