The Oil and Gas Lease Sales map below shows parcels proposed to be offered for lease by the Bureau of Land Management. This interactive map shows current and upcoming lease sales and their conflicts with wildlife and natural areas. More information on upcoming leases is shown below the map.
Advice on how to use the map: Zoom in for more detail. Select the layer list icon in the upper left, expand and turn on conservation_conflicts and other layers and sublayers. Click on parcels or conservation conflict areas for more information. Scroll through pop-ups for multiple overlapping areas by clicking on the right triangle/arrow.
September (Q3) 2025 Lease Sale
Scoping (posted 11/15/2024)
- Scoping comments on the Preliminary Parcel List are due Sunday, December 15, 2024. Comments must be submitted through the links provided to the electronic comment form under the Participate Now or Documents section of the Bureau of Land Management Colorado September 2025 Competitive Oil and Gas Lease Sale ePlanning website.
- According to the website and documents, BLM is proposing to offer 13 parcels / 12,115 acres in Northeast and Northwest Colorado. The parcels are in Arapaho, Moffatt, Rio Blanco, and Weld Counties in the Royal Gorge and White River Field Offices.
- Place based conflicts identified include overlaps with:
- Blair Mtn/Greasewood and North Colorow Lands with Wilderness Characteristics
- White River Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC)
- Lower Greasewood Gulch Potential Conservation Area
- State Wildlife Area
- Lowry Ranch Comprehensive Area Plan (parcel CO-2025-09-6253)
- Animal and plant habitat based conflicts identified include overlaps with:
- General habitat for greater sage-grouse
- Aquatic High Priority Habitat identified by Colorado Parks and Wildlife
- High Priority Habitat (migratory and winter habitats) for Big Game (elk, mule deer, and pronghorn) identified by Colorado Parks and Wildlife
- Critical habitat for endangered Colorado pikeminnow identified by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
- Important habitat for bald eagle
- Occurrences of rare plants: Fremont’s beardtongue (Penstemon fremontii var. glabrescens) and narrowstem gilia (Gilia stenothyrsa)
- Note that all parcels are on lands identified by the Bureau of Land Management as having high potential for oil and gas development.
- Lease Sale Parcels Scoping Google Earth kmz | zipped shapefile
- Lease Sale Parcels Scoping ABI Screen, a spreadsheet showing conflicts between the proposed parcels and important wildlife, wilderness and other resource values.
Resources
- 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.
- Upcoming Lease Sale Tracker (summary of lease sales and resource conflicts)
- BLM Colorado Oil & Gas Leasing Webpage
- Poster Map of Oil and Gas Development in Colorado
- Archive of Colorado Oil & Gas Lease Sale Screens
- Rocky Mountain Wild Oil and Gas Toolbox for Activists
- Information on the Assessment of Biological Impact (ABI) Screen
*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.