Oil Field on Reservation Fuels Dispute

At one of nature’s grand intersections, where the northern Great Plains roll up against the soaring battlements of Glacier National Park, the federal government is paving the way for an industrial development of potentially dominating proportions.

If it can be successfully tapped, a huge oil and natural gas field on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation just east of the park could convert more than 200 square miles of largely open country and wildlife habitat into a maze of wells, pipelines and power lines, pumping stations, processing plants, equipment yards and a network of new roads.

Exploratory drilling on the reservation is scheduled to begin this summer, although officials insist that there will be no drilling close to the park any time soon.

Much of the land targeted for exploration is a haven, at least part of each year, for many of the national park’s most valued wildlife, including bears, wolves, elk and eagles.

The U.S. Department of the Interior’s approval of a 50-year lease agreement between the Blackfeet Tribe and a Canadian oil company has caused a rift within the tribe and had pitted different arms of the federal government against each other.

On one hand is a remote reservation with nearly 70% unemployment trying to make the most out of a land base that has been repeatedly chipped away--at one point to carve out Glacier National Park.

“We have the right to determine the destiny of our land, and no one knows its value or cares more about it than we do,” said William Old Chief, chairman of the Blackfeet Tribal Council.

On the other hand is the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, a spectacular and biologically rich landscape that surrounds the park but is being hacked away by population growth to the west and by Canadian logging and oil and gas operations to the north.

The Interior Department’s Bureau of Indian Affairs has approved the tribe’s plans and has refused, so far, to prepare an environmental impact statement.

But federal Environmental Protection Agency officials, in letters to the Indian bureau, have warned that the oil and gas project could result in “significant impacts on important tribal cultural resources, wetlands, endangered species and Glacier National Park.”

U.S. Efforts to Shield Habitat

Ironically, the rest of the eastern Rocky Mountain front is a region that the Clinton administration has taken great pains to shield from industrial incursion.

In the last two years, the U.S Forest Service has put nearly half a million acres off-limits to energy and mineral development on non-tribal lands next to the reservation to protect wildlife habitat.

A number of Blackfeet were outspoken in their support of the government’s action in that case, and earlier this year some members of the tribe filed a lawsuit against the government for not conducting a comprehensive environmental review before approving the tribal project.

Meanwhile, tribal leaders say that they resent outsiders trying to tell them how to manage their lands.

“I can’t overly stress how protective this council feels toward the land,” Old Chief said. “These mountains are a source of spiritual strength. We need to have areas that are pristine.”

At the same time, Old Chief said the reservation desperately needs new sources of revenue, and he said more members of the tribe favor the oil and gas project than oppose it.

Standing with the tribe’s leaders, the Indian bureau, which is responsible for minimizing the project’s environmental damage, has dismissed EPA concerns about wetlands and endangered species such as the grizzly bear as “arbitrarily concocted scenarios.”

Rick Stefanic, the Indian bureau’s environmental specialist overseeing the Blackfeet project, said it has placed the bureau “in a very difficult position.”

“We are obliged to assist the tribe in economic development,” he said. “We also have a trust responsibility to the land, and we must abide by the environmental laws.”

According to the terms of the agreement, the tribe is being paid $3 million for drilling rights by K2 Energy Corp., which is based in Calgary. The company has agreed to give tribal members first crack at jobs and contracts generated by the operation.

Critics of the project fear a repetition of what happened at an oil and gas field just north of Glacier Park and next door to Canada’s Waterton Lakes National Park.

“There are roads and pipelines leading up every canyon outside of Waterton,” said park biologist Kevin Van Tighen. “The activity up there has driven wildlife out in great numbers.”

Livingston of K2 Energy insists that the comparison with the aging Waterton field is unfair.

“The technology is completely different today,” he said. “You can rely on helicopters instead of trucks to do your seismic work. So you don’t need as many roads. With horizontal drilling, you don’t need as many wells, and with computers to check on operations, you don’t have to be driving in there all the time.”

Livingston added that drilling along the boundary with Glacier Park could be several years away and “might never take place.”

“The chances of success out there are about 1 in 10,” he said.

K2 signed the exploration and development deal with the Blackfeet in 1997. The firm was later joined by Miller Petroleum Co. of Houston, Livingston said.

The drilling rights acquired by the two companies allow them to explore a geologic zone that has yielded more than 4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas less than 50 miles away in Canada.

The U.S. Department of Energy has estimated that there is a 50-50 chance of finding more than 6 trillion cubic feet on the U.S. side of the border in an area that includes the Blackfeet Reservation and large amounts of surrounding territory.

If natural gas is produced from wells on the reservation, the Blackfeet will be entitled to a generous share of the return--35% of gross revenues, according to Livingston.

Huge Royalties at Stake

Still, tribal critics of the deal remain uneasy. They point to statements published on K2’s Web site boasting that the firm secured reservation drilling rights at a rate “362 times less per acre” than the price paid by competing companies for non-reservation land just across the Canadian border.

“The oil companies keep dangling promises of huge royalties, but what we’re getting upfront is a very small amount of money for the rights to our land,” said Clarence Hirst, a member of the tribe who ranches on the reservation and worked in the oil and gas business for 15 years. He is one of the tribal members who filed suit against the Indian bureau and the Department of the Interior.

But Livingston said the Canadian lands are commanding higher prices because they contain proven reserves.

At the reservation, “we are going to have to spend millions of dollars just to find out if there is something down there,” he said.

But Hirst also faults the federal government for approving the deal without first assessing all of the environmental risks.

“We don’t have very much land left, and the [Indian bureau] should be looking out for it,” he said.

What Hirst, the EPA and non-Indian environmentalists want is an environmental impact statement, produced by a comprehensive investigation into the likely effects of a fully developed oil and gas field on air and water quality, wildlife, Native American sacred sites and human health on the reservation and in the park.

Environmental impact statements have been standard procedure in many other places where the government has sought to learn the effects of commercial enterprise on a valuable ecosystem.

But the assessments can be expensive and time-consuming and can lead to strict guidelines to protect natural resources.

The absence of such guidelines has prompted concerns on and off the reservation.

“There are a lot of issues that haven’t been addressed,” said Dan Carney, a wildlife biologist employed by the tribe. “Timing is one. . . . Do you stop drilling in an area if wildlife are wintering there. Where do you put the roads, and do you close them when you are done? There is better habitat in some places on the reservation than there is in the park, and we need to know how we are going take care of it.”