BILLINGS, Mont. — A Louisiana business will get $2.6 million to giveup the last staying oil and gas lease on U.S. forest land near Montana’s Glacier National Park that’s spiritual to Native Americans, federalgovernment authorities and lawyers included in the offer stated Friday.
The offer would willpower a decades-long conflict over the 10-square-mile (25-square-kilometer) oil and gas lease in the mountainous Badger-Two Medicine location of northwestern Montana.
The lease was provided in 1982 however has not been established. It’s on the website of the production story for the Blackfoot people of southern Canada and Montana’s Blackfeet Nation. Tribal members bitterly opposed drilling.
In exchange for providing up the lease, Solenex LLC will get $2.6 million, stated David McDonald with the Mountain States Legal Foundation, which represented the business. The federalgovernment will pay $2 million and the Wyss Foundation, a charitable group established by Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss, will supply the staying $625,000, according to McDonald and Wyss representative Marnee Banks.
The Solenex lease hadactually been cancelled in 2016 under then-U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell at the demand of the Blackfoot people and preservation groups.
But U.S. District Judge Richard Leon purchased the lease renewed last year. Leon stated Je