Features

Court backs Forest Service decision to ban drilling

The Associated Press
Wednesday May 09, 2001

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal appeals court has upheld the U.S. Forest Service decision to bar natural gas exploration on the Rocky Mountain Front in Montana. 

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed in a decision issued Monday that the International Petroleum Association of America lacked standing to sue the Forest Service for access to the 1.8 million acres on the Front, the area where the Rocky Mountains meet the plains south of Glacier National Park. 

“IPAA has no ’right’ to bid for leases on any Forest Service land or to compel the Forest Service to authorize leasing of its land for mineral exploration,” said the opinion by Judges Stephen Trott, David Thompson and Richard Paez. “Lacking such a right, the IPAA suffered no injury in fact as a result of the Forest Service’s decision.” 

Calls to the IPAA Monday night were not immediately returned. 

Jim Angell, an attorney with the San Francisco-based environmental law group Earthjustice, represented wilderness and backcountry groups defending the forest service’s decision. 

Former Lewis and Clark National Forest Supervisor Gloria Flora decided in 1997 to ban particular lands on the Front from oil and gas development for 10 to 15 years after public protest from nearby residents, American Indian tribes, the Sierra Club and Montana recreation companies. 

That led to a lawsuit from the Rocky Mountain Oil & Gas Association and the Washington D.C.-based IPAA, which argued that the Forest Service decision broke several land management laws. Members of Flora’s former staff had estimated that as much as 2.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas may lie beneath the Front. 

Jim Angell, an attorney with the San Francisco-based environmental law group Earthjustice, represented wilderness and backcountry groups defending the forest service’s decision. 

“It’s really some of the most pristine wildlands we’ve got in the lower 48,” Angell said. The land is habitat for grizzly bears and wolves. 

“It’s interesting because this is one of the areas the (Bush) administration has been talking about opening up to exploitation,” Angell said. 

If the Forest Service changed its mind, there’s nothing in the decision that prevents future development, Angell said. A group called Resources Management Association of Denver has also proposed drilling a well on a lease in the forest that was in place before the 1997 ban took effect. 

Skyrocketing power prices and efforts to expand the nation’s fuel reserves have renewed efforts to explore for new deposits of natural gas and oil and build new oil refineries and natural gas pipelines. 

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On the Net: 

9th Circuit opinions: http://www.ce9.uscourts.gov/ 

International Petroleum Association of America: http://www.ipaa.org 

Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund: http://www.earthjustice.org/ 

U.S. Forest Service: http://www.fs.fed.us