Tester not happy with DOI decision on Badger-Two Medicine

Montana Sen. Jon Tester said last week that he’s not happy that the Department of Interior decided to partially withdrawal its appeal of a case that could allow oil and gas drilling in the Badger Two Medicine area just south of Glacier National Park.

“I am deeply disappointed in your recent actions,” Tester wrote to Secretary of Interior David Bernhardt. “These actions represent a troubling abdication of DOI’s responsibility and disregard for the opinions of both the Blackfeet Nation and Montanans. I urge you to uphold the Department’s promises to the Blackfeet Nation and all Montanans and rejoin the efforts to defend Badger-Two Medicine from unwanted development.”

The Interior Department filed paperwork in federal court last month to dismiss its appeal against Moncrief Oil, but is pursuing its appeal against Solenex LLC. The leases are located in the Badger-Two Medicine, a 130,000-acre area along the Rocky Mountain Front.

The leases have been embroiled in controversy and litigation for more than 30 years. In 2016 and 2017 the Interior Department canceled the leases, but a federal judge overturned those decisions in two separate actions last year.

The Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service granted 47 oil and gas leases in the Badger-Two Medicine in 1982. Two years later, a drilling permit was approved on one of the leases, but drilling was stalled when a moratorium was placed on oil and gas drilling in the area.

The Interior Department canceled the controversial Solonex oil and gas lease in 2016, and Devon Energy voluntarily relinquished 15 oil and gas leases in the Badger-Two Medicine later that year—leaving just two active leases remaining. The Department then canceled those last two leases—to J.G. Kluthe Trust of Nebraska and W.A. Moncrief Jr. of Texas—in January of 2017.

Both Moncrief and Solonex subsequently sued the Department and got their lease cancellations overturned. Up until last month, Interior had planned to appeal both of these rulings, Tester said, but just a few weeks after Bernhardt replaced Ryan Zinke as Secretary of the Interior, the agency decided to withdraw its appeal in the Moncrief case. Last week, the Department went even further by asking the court to dismiss the Moncrief case entirely, which would prevent the Blackfeet Tribe from continuing to pursue the appeal on their own.

The tribe maintains the leases were granted illegally during the Reagan Administration. But Solonex attorneys note the leases underwent the proper environmental review decades ago, but they’ve been hamstrung by subsequent administrations and foot-dragging by the Forest Service, which owns the land.

A federal judge agreed with the oil companies and restored the leases.