By Kate Groetzinger
The Bureau of Land Management is moving forward with implementing several of the reconciliation bill’s provisions by proposing four final rules affecting the federal oil and gas leasing program.
These rules:
- Implement new definitions of what lands are “eligible” and “available” for leasing
- Require the BLM to make eligible lands “available for leasing” within 18 months of their nomination by industry and prohibit the BLM from adopting new stipulations or mitigation measures during the lease sale process
- Extend drilling permit terms from 3 to 4 years
- Eliminate the $5 per acre nomination fee
The BLM is offering 30-day comment periods on two of the four rules, all of which will be published in the Federal Register tomorrow. The other two rules will be effective immediately upon publication.
The BLM is rushing to implement the irresponsible changes to oil and gas drilling on public lands required by the reconciliation bill. These changes put the oil and gas industry in charge of our public lands by setting the BLM up to be overwhelmed by leasing nominations and by removing the agency’s discretion over which public lands it offers for lease.
Removing the nomination fee will allow companies to propose vast tracts of public lands for leasing, which the BLM will now be required to offer within 18 months. This change will place a significant burden on BLM staff, who are already spread thin following the irresponsible layoffs of BLM staff earlier this year. The BLM will have to shift significant resources into preparing these lease sales, effectively making the BLM a single-use agency dedicated to oil and gas management.
Finally, by issuing all of these changes as final rather than draft rules, the Trump administration is signaling its disregard for public input. This is not how public land management is supposed to work.
More information about the rules:
1) Eligible/available definition (issued as final rule, no comment period)
- This change takes discretion away from BLM to determine what lands are available for leasing
- Prior to this change, there were no statutory definitions for these terms, which allowed to use BLM its own internal definitions
- New definitions reply on Resource Management Plans, which are often decades old and outdated
2) Make available for leasing w/in 18 months + no new stipulations/mitigation measures (issued as final rule with truncated 30-day comment period)
- This change requires the BLM to make lands nominated by industry available for leasing within 18 months
- It also prohibits the BLM from including any stipulations or mitigation in a lease, unless such stipulations or mitigation are included in an approved Resource Management Plan
3) Extending APD terms to 4 years (issued as final rule with truncated 30-day comment period)
- This change gives companies more time to sit on public lands without producing oil by extending the effective term of drilling permits from 3 to 4 years
4) Eliminating EOI fee (issued as final rule, no comment period)
- This change removes the $5 per acre nomination fee, encouraging industry to nominate vast tracts of land
- This, combined with the requirement that BLM offer all nominated acreage within 18 months, will make lease sales much bigger
Kate Groetzinger is Communications Manager with Center for Western Priorities.