Interior cancels 15 more oil-gas leases in Badger-Two Medicine

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell announced the cancellation of 15 oil and gas lease in Montana’s Badger-Two Medicine area Wednesday in a ceremony in Washington that included Blackfeet Nation leaders and the head of Devon Energy Corp., the oil and gas company that relinquished its leases. “It is both spectacular, but more important a sacred site and very important to the culture and the values and the story of the Blackfeet Nation and its people going back since time immemorial,” Jewell said. “It should not have been leased to begin with.” Jewell made the announcement with Harry Barnes, chairman of the Blackfeet Nation, and Dave Hager, CEO of Devon Energy Corp., which owned the leases and voluntarily gave them up. The Interior secretary called the Badger-Two Medicine a place where people can renew their souls. In the future, she added, development proposals should be looked at on a landscape level. And all voices, she said, should be heard up front “not at the end of the day...more