The oil and gas industry will be able to lock up over 200 million acres of public lands under current Senate budget bill
While public land protectors across the political spectrum have been scrambling to strip the sale of over 3 million acres of national public land from the big budget bill going through Congress, a less sexy but equally sinister attack on our public lands has been quietly making its way through the House and Senate. This attack would sell out millions of acres of our public lands to oil and gas companies for a fraction of the current cost, allowing them to lock up millions of acres in drilling leases and putting even more money into the pockets of corporations and billionaires.
These oil and gas provisions, championed by Senator Steve Daines of Montana, would roll back important reforms made by Congress just a few years ago that raised royalty rates for drilling on public land, instituted a fee to nominate lands for auction, and ended the practice of noncompetitive leasing, which allows companies to pick up oil and gas leases on public lands for $1.50 an acre. The bill would also give the oil and gas industry access to drill on more than 200 million acres of public lands — an area larger than Wyoming and Montana combined — through mandated oil and gas lease sales, essentially cutting the public out of the management of public land. These leases start at 10 years but can be extended for decades, keeping lands from being managed for recreational purposes or habitat conservation. The bill would also turbocharge oil and gas leasing in Alaska, mandating four lease sales in the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and six lease sales in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska over the next ten years.
Massive quarterly lease sales
Only 19 percent of BLM lands in the West are off limits to oil and gas development under their management plans, according to a report by The Wilderness Society. That leaves over 200 million acres open to oil and gas leasing. Supporters of the oil and gas industry claim that leasing more land for drilling will lower energy prices, but there is no evidence to support that. Oil and gas companies currently have over 22 million acres of public land under lease, and almost half of that — 9.7 million acres — has yet to be drilled on. Oil and gas companies have been sitting on about this much public land since the first Trump presidency. There’s no public benefit to allowing them to lock up more land through leasing, especially when the public will be cut out of the decision-making process entirely. This provision would make drilling the de facto priority use of BLM lands, put areas with high recreational and cultural values in danger, and take away the federal government’s ability to say “no” to drilling in inappropriate places.
Royalty rate decrease
The tax cuts for billionaires and corporations in the big budget bill are expected to increase the deficit by around $3 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Slashing the royalty rates for oil and gas production on public lands is essentially a tax cut for oil and gas companies, who raked in $19.8 billion in revenue in the first quarter of 2025. The current bill text would roll back the federal royalty rate from 16.7 to 12 percent, the level established over a century ago. This cut would lead to around $6 billion in lost federal revenue, according to a report by Resources for the Future. Again, there’s no public benefit to this. History has shown oil and gas companies don’t pass their savings on to consumers at the pump, they give their excess profits out to investors.
No-fee nomination and noncompetitive leasing
The Inflation Reduction Act ended the practice of noncompetitive leasing, in which companies can buy up leases that don’t sell at auction for pennies on the dollar, as well as implemented a $5 fee for nominating public lands. Both of these reforms were long overdue and have made public land management more efficient. The $5 nomination fee saves the BLM time and money by ensuring companies are only nominating public lands they intend to bid on. Before the fee, the BLM routinely held massive, irresponsible oil and gas lease sales. Between 2017 and 2019, more than 19 million acres of national public lands that were wastefully offered to industry went unsold. Many of these unsold leases then ended up in the bargain bin, where companies could pick them up for just $1.50 an acre and then never even put them into production. In contrast, lease sales held since the IRA passed have brought in average bids between $900 and $2,000 per acre. That’s a much better return for taxpayers.
Nobody wants this
Westerners overwhelmingly oppose these regressive changes, according to a poll conducted earlier this year by the National Wildlife Federation. Over 70 percent of voters in Colorado, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming said we should keep existing fees for oil and gas development, and over 60 percent in every state opposed reducing opportunities for public input in public land management. The Colorado College 2025 Conservation in the West poll found similar opinions on oil and gas. That poll surveyed voters in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Montana, Wyoming, and Utah and found that over 70 percent of voters wanted to prioritize the conservation of clean air and water on public lands over increasing energy development. Only 12 percent of voters polled by Colorado College support lowering the royalty rate on oil and gas extracted from public land.
What now?
Keeping public lands in public hands means defending our right to have a say about what happens on these lands. That includes ensuring oil and gas companies pay their fair share for resources extracted from these lands. Lawmakers like Senator Daines want to give handouts to their oil and gas donors by reducing royalty rates and mandating leasing on hundreds of millions of acres of public lands, even as oil and gas sales held this very month have shown how needless leasing only shortchanges taxpayers and puts treasured public lands at unnecessary risk.
Feature image: Pumpjacks on public land; Source: BLM/Flickr