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.
Current Threats
On July 4, 2025, the Federal Budget Reconciliation Bill (the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” or OBBA) was signed into law. Among many other things, this law undid reforms to federal oil and gas leasing and development that Rocky Mountain Wild fought hard for. This new law gives oil companies free rein to lease over 200 million acres of national public lands anytime they want. It also eliminates the Bureau of Land Management’s authority to ensure extraction doesn’t hurt wildlife, clean water, recreation, and areas of historic and cultural importance. Learn more about the impact of the OBBA here.
Despite these setbacks, Rocky Mountain Wild continues to work with our coalition partners to fight for biodiversity and push back against policies that favor big business over the needs of humans, wildlife, and our planet. You can help! Our federal agencies need to hear that people care about conservation.
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
- Wild Montana’s Article: How the “big beautiful bill” sells out our public lands.
- The Wilderness Society’s Open for Drilling Report (incorporating research by Rocky Mountain Wild)
- Open for Drilling Map
- 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:
- 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 8/25/2025 and it is available as a zipped shapefile. Extracts for states in the Rocky Mountain Region are available in this Google Drive Folder.
- The Google Earth kmz data in the Google Drive Folder is color coded by held by production status: Red = held by actual production. Brown = held by allocated production. Purple = not held by production. Grey = production status unknown.
- Currently authorized leases spatial data extracted from the Bureau’s Oil and Gas Leases Feature Service as of 8/25/2025. 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, and removing internal attributes.
- Email Alison if you have any questions.
*Bureau of Land Management, Oil and Gas Statistics, referenced 3/31/2025.