Ruling is good, but remember the designation

The federal judge scolded the Bureau of Land Management in Montana last month, and for good reason.

The agency had authorized three oil and gas leases in potentially sensitive areas on public land without analyzing environmental effects or taking public comment.

While any leases issued in such a way should be put on hold, we'd caution foes of leasing against making monument status itself a reason for blocking exploration.

"It's hard to imagine a more blatant example of an agency's failure to meet the congressional mandate to include citizens in the decision-making process," U.S. District Judge Don Molloy wrote in his 60-page decision.

He suspended drilling pending a hearing July 8 on whether the leases should be invalidated based on violations of the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Historic Preservation Act.

The leases are in a rugged 50,000-acre area known as Bullwhacker, in the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument and along the Upper Missouri Wild and Scenic River.

The leases were challenged and at least temporarily invalidated not because they happen to lie in the overlapping national set-aside areas, but rather because they are on public land and thus subject to the acts, facts that apparently were ignored by the BLM.

The Montana Wilderness Association, in fact, filed suit seeking to block the leases 10 months before the monument was even designated.

Our purpose in bringing all this up today is twofold:

The judge is right on the money in holding the federal land managers to the letter of the law when important decisions are being made about the use of public land. And the law, whether the feds like it or not, gives the landowners -- us -- a say in how and whether the land is developed.

That having been said, we'd warn for those who would shut out all oil and gas development in or around the three-year-old monument that the designation itself did, in fact, state that all existing leases in the area would be honored, and we believe they should be, as long as they were properly issued.

The judge's ruling puts three Macum Energy Inc. leases in a gray area: They were issued before the monument designation and were thus "existing," but they apparently were issued improperly.

"While Montanans were debating how the area should be managed and whether to allow gas drilling in the proposed National Monument, the BLM quietly issued leases to drill," according to MWA member and attorney Cathy Lewis, "only informing the public after the fact, thereby circumventing the public process and analysis required by law."

At public meetings last year on management plans for the area, BLM said 44 leases were in place inside the monument boundary before it was designated.

We don't know how many of them were issued properly and how many were not, but that -- and not the fact that they are situated inside the boundary -- should be the main point in deciding whether drilling on them can go forward.