Wilderness Society News:

ALBUQUERQUE — The Department of the Interior announced its plan to revise the BLM Oil and Gas Rule (also known as the Fluid Mineral Leases and Leasing Process Rule), which updated and improved a woefully outdated federal oil and gas leasing program that was riddled with de facto subsidies for fossil fuel companies. The Interior Department also announced its plan to roll back regulations aimed at preventing methane waste from oil and gas operations.

Undermining the Rule is another attempt by the administration and its allies in Congress to use the pretense of a national “energy emergency” to open the doors wide for unrestrained drilling on public lands.

New Mexico communities already face rampant fossil fuel development on their public lands. According to a recent report by The Wilderness Society, nearly 87% of BLM-managed public lands in New Mexico are open to oil and gas leasing, which is higher than the national average.

In response to the news, Michael Casaus, New Mexico state director at The Wilderness Society, said:

“From polluted air and water to landscapes forever scarred, New Mexicans already experience firsthand the negative impacts of unchecked oil and gas development. With nearly 90% of our BLM lands already open to leasing and drilling, rolling back the Oil and Gas Rule is yet another attack on our freedom to breathe clean air, drink clean water and pass our public lands on to future generations.”

When the Rule was finalized in 2024, the BLM used its existing legal authority—much of which was enacted into law thanks to the leadership of Western Senators and Members of Congress—to make fossil fuel companies pay a fairer share for extracting public resources, cover the cost of clean-up and restoration after drilling is finished, limit participation of bad actors and put guardrails on what lands are offered for oil and gas leasing. These critical updates reflected the support of a broad majority of Western voters and lawmakers, the latter of whom passed complementary provisions in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act.

Interior’s plan to revise the Oil and Gas Rule is a giveaway to the oil and gas industry in a number of ways, including:

• Slashing bonding rates that oil and gas companies must pay to fund clean-up and restoration costs of their projects, which means communities will have to continue footing the bill for cleaning up the mess of abandoned or orphaned wells.
• Significantly reducing public comment periods, a critical process that allows the public to weigh in on leasing decisions that impact their communities and beyond.
• Eliminating preference criteria that screened nominated lease parcels for conflicts—including with wildlife habitat, cultural resources, recreation and sacred sites—and that directed leasing to areas with higher oil and gas potential, to avoid purely speculative leasing, which prevents those leased lands from being managed for other, more valuable uses.