North Fork has plenty of oil, gas leases in U.S.

By CHRIS PETERSON / Hungry Horse News

The North Fork of the Flathead is blanketed by oil and gas leases and they're not in Canada — they're right here in Montana, just north of Columbia Falls on Flathead National Forest lands.

The leases date back to the 1970s and have been held in what amounts to legal limbo since 1985, when James R. Conner of Kalispell, members of the Montana Wildlife Federation and the Madison-Gallatin Alliance sued Robert Burford, director of the Bureau of Land Management.

In early 1981, the Forest Service issued environmental assessments recommending that 1.3 million acres of land in the Flathead and Gallatin National Forests be leased for oil and gas development.

Environmental assessments, from a legal standpoint, are quick environmental reviews that do not go into the same depth and breadth of environmental analysis that a full-blown environmental impact statement does.

The Wildlife Federation, in turn, sued, claiming the sale of the leases without an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) that looked at the impacts on several endangered species, including grizzly bears, bald eagles, peregrine falcons and wolves, was against federal law — even though some of the leases were what's known as "no surface occupancy" leases.

Those are leases that don't disturb the ground, but are tapped through directional drilling from a location that does allow ground disturbance.

The environmental groups prevailed in their suit and in 1988, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld most of the lower court rulings.

All told, the Forest Service and the BLM created more than 700 separate leases. Those leases, even today, still cover most of the Whitefish Range and some even nudge the North Fork of the Flathead River. Most of the leases are held by out-of-state oil and gas companies — primarily in Texas.

The companies, however, pay no fees. In 1985, when the lower court initially ruled in favor of Conner, the BLM suspended the leases.

And they haven't been touched since.

Why?

The EIS to look at lease impacts on Endangered Species and the like was never completed, never touched, though it certainly has been contemplated, noted Linda Smith, Lands and Minerals program manager for the Flathead National Forest.

She said there has been no overtures from any of the companies that hold the leases to push the process along, either.

Leslie Vaculik, leasable minerals specialist with the Forest Service concurred.

"We're in a holding pattern right now with Forest Plans," she said.

But that doesn't mean the door isn't open, either. Forest plan revision under the Bush Administration doesn't actually complete an EIS. Individual projects, under the Bush methodology, are subject to environmental review.

The Bush plan was also successfully challenged in court and so the entire revision process is, in short, being revised once again.

And the landscape, both literally and legally, is changing as well. Species that were considered endangered when Conner v. Burford was first argued have been delisted from the Endangered Species Act and others are on their way toward delisting, such as gray wolves. And oil and gas prices have shot through the roof.

A U.S. Geological Survey study, done in 2002, estimated that the Montana Thrust Belt, which includes all of the North Fork, estimates that there's a mean of 8.6 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered natural gas, 109 million barrels of oil and 240 million barrels of natural gas liquids.

It may be just a matter of time before an energy company once again comes calling to the woods of the North Fork of the Flathead. After all, there is a history of tried and failed attempts of energy exploration there.

For example, the Inside North Fork Road to Kintla Lake was built before Glacier was a National Park to facilitate travel to and from oil wells in the area. Those old wells, long abandoned, still exist to a degree.

There are no oil and gas leases in Glacier proper.