Oil and Gas Development on Federal Lands
The federal government owns rights to about 700 million acres of onshore mineral resources, including oil and natural gas in the United States. That is about 30% of the lands in the United States. As of the end of September 2024, over 22 million acres of these lands were leased to corporations and individuals for oil and gas development. Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Montana, and Nevada have the largest amount of land leased in the Continental United States*.
Rocky Mountain Wild works with a coalition of organizations across the Rocky Mountain West that monitors oil and gas leasing in those states. Oil and gas development compromises our public lands and waters, changes and fragments wildlife habitats, threatens irreplaceable cultural resources and sacred sites, and risks our health and outdoor legacy. We work to stop leasing that would harm wildlife and wild lands. We have been directly involved in the deferral of over 2 million acres of public land from oil and gas development.
Bureau of Land Management Onshore Oil and Gas Leasing Rule
On April 12, 2024, the Bureau of Land Management (the Bureau) released a final rule to revise the Bureau’s oil and gas leasing regulations. Rocky Mountain Wild has been collaborating with many organizations over the years to modernize the process for leasing public lands for oil and gas leasing in a way that protects wildlife and wildlands. This rule goes into effect on June 22, 2024 Learn more:
- The Bureau’s Fluid Mineral Leases and Leasing Process Webpage
- Text of the Rule in the Federal Register
- Coalition for Oil and Gas Reform Website (including a way to show your support)
Rocky Mountain Wild works with our coalition partners to defend the rule against industry backed opposition (legal and legislative) and will continue to monitor oil and gas lease sales to make sure the Bureau is following this rule.
Rocky Mountain Wild’s Oil and Gas Toolbox for Activists gives you the information you need to make your voice heard defending wildlife and wild lands from inappropriate oil and gas development. Visit our state specific web pages for information about how to engage on upcoming Federal oil and gas lease sales:
Resources
- Poster Map of Oil and Gas Development in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming
- Geospatial Data for currently authorized Federal Oil and Gas Lease Parcels
- Federal Oil and Gas Leasing geospatial data is viewable on the Bureau of Land Management’s Mineral & Land Records System (MLRS) Research Map**. Rocky Mountain Wild created a GIS snapshot of this data on 6/11/2024 and it is available as a zipped shapefile. Extracts for states in the Rocky Mountain Region are available in this Google Drive Folder.
- In Google Earth kmz data in the Google Drive Folder, Red = held by production. Purple = not held by production.
- Currently authorized leases spatial data extracted from the Bureau’s Oil and Gas Leases Feature Service as of 6/11/2024. Data was modified by Rocky Mountain Wild by extracting currently authorized leases, removing data with the poorest quality (including all parcels in Texas), changing the projection, adding missing currently authorized parcels from recent sales in Wyoming (the majority of missing parcels with recent effective dates), adding attribute data from the BLM Land & Mineral System Reports as of 6/11 – 6/14/2024, and removing leases no longer authorized as of 6/11/2024.
- Email Alison if you have any questions.
- For all proposed lease sales in Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming, Rocky Mountain Wild performed its Assessment of Biological Impact (ABI) screen, creating a spreadsheet that shows conflicts between the proposed parcels and important wildlife, wilderness and other resource values. These spreadsheets and geospatial data for the proposed parcels are archived in the following Google Drive folders:
*Bureau of Land Management, Oil and Gas Statistics, referenced 3/31/2025.
**The Research Map doesn’t work in all web browsers. I was able to successfully access the map in the Firefox browser on a PC on 6/17/2024.