The BLM had a bad day in court this week when a bunch of oil leases they’d sold in central and southern Montana got canceled . . .
A federal judge on Friday canceled nearly 300 oil and gas leases in Montana because government officials failed to properly study the risks of all that drilling to the environment and water supply.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management sold 287 leases covering approximately 227 square miles of public land in central and eastern Montana in 2017 and in 2018. The agency’s environmental reviews concluded that drilling would carry minimal risk to the areas’ natural resources.
Three residents and two environmental groups sued in 2018, saying the agency didn’t consider the risks of shallow hydraulic fracturing on groundwater or the cumulative effects of adding hundreds of drilling sites to the landscape. They also said the agency did not address the leases effects on the release of greenhouse gases and climate change.
Read more . . .