Judge: Feds must act on Montana oil-gas lease

BILLINGS, Mont. — A federal judge accused the Obama administration Wednesday of trying to “run the clock out” on a pending decision on an oil and gas lease near Glacier National Park that’s been held up for several decades.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon gave the Interior Department 24 hours to act on the matter. The 6,200-acre lease is in Montana’s Badger-Two Medicine area, considered sacred by the Blackfoot tribes of the U.S. and Canada.

The Interior Department said in November it intends to cancel the lease, but it has yet to follow through. Lease owner Solenex LLC of Baton Rouge, La., wants to drill for gas on the site and says its 1982 lease remains valid.

The company sued in 2013 to challenge a long-standing suspension of the lease.

Leon has expressed frustration in recent months over the government’s handling of the case.

On Wednesday, he accused Justice Department attorney Ruth Storey of acting “silly” when she suggested the latest delay was out of deference to the court, according to a transcript of a Wednesday hearing in federal court in Washington D.C.

“It’s pretty clear what’s been going on at the government. They’re running the clock out,” Leon said.

The Solenex lease is on the site of the creation story for the Blackfoot tribes of southern Canada and the Blackfeet Nation of Montana. It’s located just west of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation within the Lewis and Clark National Forest.