The process and impacts of oil and gas development in the West
Multiple-use mandates have long governed the use of public lands in the West. While oil and gas drilling remains one important use of America’s public lands, by law it is not the dominant use—just one of many activities that occur on national public lands. Planning, oversight, and forward-looking energy priorities are necessary to ensure balanced resource use on public lands.
The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act included some major reforms to the federal oil and gas drilling system. It raised the cost to lease public lands for drilling, as well as the royalties on oil and gas produced on public lands. It also eliminated non-competitive leasing, which allowed companies to lease public lands for just $1.50 per acre. Finally, it added a royalty on all methane extracted from public lands, including methane gas that is vented or flared.
In 2024, the Bureau of Land Management codified these reforms in its Oil and Gas Leasing Rule. The rule also includes increased bonding requirements, which help ensure oil and gas companies pay to clean up after themselves, and implements leasing criteria that directs oil and gas leasing away from public lands that host important wildlife, recreation, and cultural resources and have little to no potential for development. The rule is the first comprehensive update to the federal onshore oil and gas leasing framework since 1988, the first update to minimum bonding levels since 1960, and the first increase in royalty rates in more than 100 years.
While the current leasing framework is greatly improved due to these reforms, decades of indiscriminate leasing have led to the oil and gas industry stockpiling public land leases. Companies currently have over 10 million acres of public land under lease that they have yet to drill on. Idle leases lock up lands that could be managed for other purposes such as recreation, conservation, renewable energy development, or climate change mitigation—while doing nothing to offset U.S. energy costs. Additionally, the Inflation Reduction Act tied renewable energy leasing on public lands to oil and gas leasing, locking in more oil and gas development for years to come.
Unfortunately, the Trump administration is intent on making even more public land available for drilling. President Donald Trump declared a “national energy emergency” in January 2025, despite the fact that the U.S. is currently producing record amounts of both natural gas and oil. Meanwhile, U.S. Senator Steve Daines has introduced legislation to undo the common sense leasing reforms passed by Congress and implemented by the BLM under the Biden administration.