Suit says cancellation of leases politically motivated

The president of a Texas oil company last week filed suit against the federal government, alleging that the Department of the Interior’s January cancellation of its oil and gas lease in the Badger Two Medicine Area was politically motivated.

W.A. Moncrief, Jr.’s lawsuit, filed April 5 in federal circuit court in Washington, D.C., asks the court to reinstate the canceled lease.

Shortly before former President Barack Obama left office, the department canceled the last two remaining leases within the 165,000-acre area along the Rocky Mountain Front, land considered sacred to the Blackfeet Tribe.

In his lawsuit, filed last week, Moncrief notes the timing of the cancellation and alleges that the Obama administration failed to provide him with an opportunity to contest the cancellation. The oil executive also alleges that then-Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell lacked the legal authority to cancel it.

The Jan. 10 cancellation “demonstrates that the agency was improperly influenced by political influences to the exclusion of sound historical, scientific, technical and legal analysis,” the lawsuit states.

Moncrief’s complaint also challenges the government’s decision to establish protections for the area, based on its historical and cultural significance to the tribe.

“The notice of cancellation relied heavily on the Advisory Council’s determination that the Badger-Two Medicine area could not be developed without purportedly harming the Blackfeet Nation’s interest in the land,” the suit states, adding that it fails to address “the Blackfeet Nation’s history of promoting oil and gas development on these same National Forest lands.”

Moncrief in March submitted a petition to reconsider the cancellation to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. While still serving as Montana’s lone Representative to the U.S. House, Zinke has said that reversing the government’s initial decision to grant the leases would be unfair to the leaseholders.

“I don’t support arbitrarily canceling leases, because that’s a contract,” then-Rep. Zinke told the Inter Lake in April 2015. “I understand the tribe and the sensitivity of that area, and if the government is going to pull out of the leases, they would have to either provide compensation or make other leases available with similar prospects.”

Since becoming the department’s secretary under President Donald Trump’s administration in March, Zinke has not indicated how he will act on the issue.

Both Moncrief’s lawsuit and a press release issued Friday by the Blackfeet Tribe indicate that the tribal government offered to compensate leaseholders with oil and gas leases located elsewhere on the reservation.

“Mr. Moncrief makes it sound as if we were offering leases on adjacent lands, when in fact it’s 50 miles from the Badger-Two Medicine to the oil fields we were discussing,” the press release states. “The Blackfeet are not against oil and gas development. But we have always been and will always be against oil and gas development in our most sacred places.”

Blackfeet Tribal Business Chairman Harry Barnes also pushed back against the lawsuit’s allegations of political maneuvering by the Obama Administration, calling Moncrief’s claims “preposterous.”

“Our 1971 declaration of the [Badger Two Medicine’s] sacred nature was signed one day after President Obama’s 10th birthday,” Barnes stated in the release. “The history here runs deep, and establishes clearly that this issue is anything but ‘last minute.’”

The controversial lease was approved, along with dozens of others, by the department in the early 1980s. Most were voluntarily relinquished in the intervening years.

Since they were approved, the Blackfeet have argued that the federal government failed to fulfill its legal requirement to review the area’s cultural significance to the tribe.

Reporter Sam Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.