Openings & Closings

Fort Peck Tribes estimate 25 percent boost in gaming revenues

Thursday, March 24, 2016

Artist's rendering of the proposed Buffalo Rivers Casino and Lodge on the Fort Peck Reservation in Montana. The website for the project is defunct and there's been no news on the development for a year. Elsewhere on the reservation, though, the tribal gaming enterprise is booming. Image from Fort Peck Tribes

The gaming economy is booming for the Fort Peck Tribes of Montana, The Missoula Independent reports.

Deputy finance manager Susie Perry estimates that revenues at the tribe's gaming locations are up 25 percent. She told the paper that a per capita payment from a $75 million trust fund settlement "contributed to the upswing," presumably because recipients are still spreading the money around on the reservation.

The energy industry, on the other hand, has been a bust thanks largely to low oil prices. The tribe's oil wells operated at a loss in 2015, minerals director Forrest Smith told the paper. Between 2010 and 2014, they had generated about $2 million a year, the paper reported.

Last year, the tribe announced plans for a new gaming facility that would have relied on energy-related traffic but council members questioned the need for the project. There's been no news on the Buffalo Rivers Casino and Lodge for nearly a year.

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The boom and bust, the promise and peril, of the Bakken (The Missoula Independent 3/24)