Oil and Gas Leasing

What it does

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is proposing to revise its oil and gas leasing regulations to reflect new requirements in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB); policy direction in Executive Orders (E.O.) entitled Unleashing American Energy and Ensuring Lawful Governance and Implementing the President's "Department of Government Efficiency" Deregulatory Initiative and Modernizing Payments To and From America's Bank Account; and policy guidance in Secretary's Order entitled Unleashing American Energy. In addition, the proposed rule would reflect provisions of the Royalty Resiliency Act, which pertains to applications for oil and gas agreements for allocation schedules that outline how royalties would be distributed across different leases within the agreement. The BLM proposes to return the minimum bond amounts to those prior to the finalization of the 2024 rule. Finally, the proposed rule would improve the BLM's leasing process to ensure stewardship of public lands as required by the Mineral Leasing Act (MLA) and as directed by the OBBB and the above Executive orders.

The Land Management Bureau's summary, as published in the Federal Register.

What it would change

9 parts of Title 43 of the Code of Federal Regulations:

43 CFR 3000, 43 CFR 3100, 43 CFR 3110, 43 CFR 3120, 43 CFR 3130, 43 CFR 3140, 43 CFR 3150, 43 CFR 3160, 43 CFR 3180

Before this

No earlier Federal Register document under regulation identifier 1004-AF05 since Jan. 1, 2025.

What happens next and when

Send your comments on this proposed rule to the BLM on or before August 24, 2026. The BLM is not obligated to consider any comments received after this date in making its decision on the final rule.

The agency's dates, word for word.

Check it yourself

• The document in the Federal Register
• Docket BLM-2025-0037 on Regulations.gov
• Title 43 on eCFR

The record as published

Source: the Federal Register (public domain). The document in the Federal Register