A federal appeals court has ruled to cancel a long-disputed oil and gas lease on land in northwestern Montana considered sacred to Native American tribes in the U.S. and Canada.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on Tuesday reversed a judge's 2018 decision that had allowed a Louisiana company to keep its lease within the Badger Two-Medicine area of Lewis and Clark National Forest.
The lease owned by Solenex LLC was the last active exploratory lease of about 45 issued in the Badger-Two Medicine area since the 1980s