Interior Department proposed eliminating 90% of public comment windows for oil and gas leasing on federal lands

On June 24, 2026, the Interior Department published a proposed rule in the Federal Register (document 2026-12734) that would fundamentally restructure public participation in oil and gas leasing on Bureau of Land Management federal lands. The proposal would eliminate the existing 30-day pre-leasing comment period entirely and eliminate the 30-day National Environmental Policy Act environmental review comment period, while reducing the formal protest period from 30 to 10 days — cutting total required public input from 90 days to 10. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum described the changes as removing "red tape" that "hamstrings domestic energy production."

The proposal would also reduce the financial bonds oil and gas companies must post before drilling by more than 90%. Those bonds cover cleanup and reclamation costs when operators abandon wells or fail financially; reducing them shifts environmental liability risk from producers to the public. The proposal would additionally eliminate BLM's requirement to assess resource conflicts — including impacts on ranching, recreation, water supplies, and tribal lands — before putting land up for lease, and would relax requirements limiting methane waste from drilling operations.

Environmental and public-land advocates said the comment-period changes violate the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires agencies to gather public comment on federal actions affecting the environment, and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, which Congress passed in 1976 to require meaningful public involvement in federal land management decisions. The changes would need to be finalized after the standard notice-and-comment period under the Administrative Procedure Act, but advocates argued the substantive elimination of NEPA and FLPMA comment rights cannot be accomplished by regulation alone and requires congressional action.

Interior's action is part of a broader administration pattern of eliminating environmental review and public participation mechanisms: the Council on Environmental Quality rescinded all NEPA implementing regulations in February 2025, the Forest Service eliminated environmental assessment comment periods in February 2026, and BLM had previously expanded categorical exclusions from environmental review for energy producers.