The Trump administration wants to make it easier and cheaper for fossil fuels companies to lease public lands to drill for oil and gas, claiming current rules “have created needless impediments” for the industry. It announced its proposed rule change on June 22, and published the full rule in the Federal Register on June 24.
The Bureau of Land Management cites last summer’s One Big Beautiful Bill and the January 2025 executive order titled “Unleashing American Energy” as the justification for the proposed rule change. The order “directs the removal of impediments imposed on the development and use of our Nation’s abundant energy and natural resources.”
One of the biggest changes under the new rules would be overhauling bonding requirements. When an oil and gas company leases a parcel of BLM land, it pays a bond up front. These bonds protect taxpayers from footing the bill when a well is retired, ensuring that the company pays for the plugging, cleanup, and remediation.
Prior to 2024, bond minimums had not changed since the 1950s and 60s, depending on the kind of lease. Under the Biden administration, the BLM increased those minimums, saying that they were no longer sufficient to pay for site reclamation when an oil and gas company did not meet their obligations to plug a retired well. Under the new policies, operators now pay $125,000 for an individual lease, and operators that have many wells in one state pay a statewide bond of $500,000.
Now, the BLM wants to return to the bonding requirements of more than sixty years ago. The bond for individual lease would revert to just $10,000 and the statewide bond would revert to $25,000. In both cases, that would be a reduction of over 90% in what fossil fuels companies pay to make sure wells are not orphaned, polluting air, water, and soil.
Critics say the American public will be left holding the bag for the fossil fuels industry’s pollution if the rule goes into effect.
Autumn Hanna, vice president of the nonpartisan budget watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense, said during a press conference on Wednesday that bonds are not excessively burdensome, but a necessary cost of doing business.
“Every well eventually stops producing, every well eventually must be plugged and reclaimed,” she said. “The question is whether those costs will be paid by the companies that profited from their development, or by taxpayers.”
When the oil and gas industry orphans wells and leaves taxpayers to bear the responsibility of cleanup, it can get expensive. For instance, Colorado’s state orphaned wells program estimates that it costs around $92,000 to plug one well and reclaim the site, including environmental remediation. Wyoming’s state orphaned wells program estimates that it costs between $5,000 and $7,000 to plug and abandon a well site. Utah’s program has spent $5.8 million to plug 154 wells.
The BLM maintains that it has the regulatory authority to ensure fossil fuels companies meet their cleanup obligations. It says it has the flexibility to set higher bond amounts for “at-risk companies,” enact stricter reclamation requirements for these operators, and developer other ways to make sure the taxpayer isn’t footing the bill.
The proposed rule change goes beyond bond requirements, however. It says the full package will “eliminate unnecessary obstacles to domestic energy production, modernize resource management, and strengthen the nation’s long-term energy resilience.”
Currently, the public has 90 days to review a proposed lease sale and comment or protest on it. The BLM wants to eliminate a 30-day scoping period and a 30-day comment period on draft environmental impact statements, and reduce the 30-day protest window to just 10 days.
The agency says the longer period extends leasing timelines “without providing significant added value or meaningful changes to the analysis.” It also says reducing public comment periods allow the BLM to “respond more effectively to industry needs and market demands.”
The agency is also proposing the elimination of preference criteria, which helps the BLM identify preferred parcels for oil and gas leasing. Factors that can impact whether a parcel would be preferred for leasing include cultural sites and resources and wildlife habitat and conservation potential, among others.
The BLM says that “(m)odern drilling technology has advanced, allowing for reduced surface impacts, which the preference criteria do not adequately consider.”
“The agency is effectively saying that our public lands are on sale to the highest bidder,” said Gregg DeBie, a senior staff attorney at the Wilderness Society. “Interior is letting the oil industry dominate over any other use of the public lands, which will come at the cost of community wellbeing and the ability of future generations to access and enjoy those lands.”
The BLM manages about 245 million acres of land, mostly in the West, but oversees over 700 million acres of subsurface mineral estate, even if the land on top of those minerals is owned by someone else. This rule change also seeks to throw out a requirement to notify these landowners of any potential leases of these minerals under their land.
Ashley Korenblat, managing director of consulting group Public Land Solutions, said the Trump administration’s stated reasons for overhauling oil and gas regulations on BLM land were disingenuous.
“This stated reason for this rule, that existing regulations are needless implements to energy development, is a little bit similar to saying that all rules and regulations that we make as a society to protect the greater good are needless impediments to all businesses,” she said. “We make these rules for a reason, usually to avoid future known problems, which in this case is both orphaned wells and bad decisions about the highest and best use of public lands.”
Members of the public will have between 30 and 60 days to comment on the rule in the Federal Register.
Copyright 2026 Rocky Mountain Community Radio. This story was shared via Rocky Mountain Community Radio, a network of public media stations in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico, including Aspen Public Radio.
