Action Alerts

The public deserves a say on oil and gas leasing

What's At Stake

The Trump administration wants to stage another massive public lands giveaway to oil and gas billionaires — while silencing the public.

Their new proposal guts requirements that ensure Big Oil pays to clean up and plug oil wells after drilling on public lands. And they want to cut your voice out of the leasing process by eliminating opportunities to raise your concerns about drilling on public lands, while leaving local communities to pay for cleanup.

Submit a public comment today and tell the administration to abandon this reckless proposal.

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The proposed rule would:

  • Stick taxpayers with the bill: Currently, oil companies must pay to clean up and plug their wells. The administration’s rule would put taxpayers on the hook for these costs when drillers leave town — a massive giveaway to the oil and gas industry at taxpayers’ expense.
  • Silence the public’s voice: The rule eliminates long-standing opportunities for local input and slashes the sole remaining public engagement period to a mere 10 days. The rule would also let the administration keep the public in the dark about the environmental impacts of proposed leasing until after a lease sale — a stage when it is too late for the public to use that information to participate in the leasing process.
  • Eliminate commonsense leasing standards: The rule will eliminate protections that guide drilling away from sensitive wildlife habitat, cultural sites, and treasured recreation areas.

Across the western United States, abandoned oil and gas wells already threaten public lands, wildlife, water, and nearby communities. Rolling back these requirements shifts potentially hundreds of billions of dollars in future cleanup liabilities away from the trillion-dollar oil and gas industry and onto the American public.

The Trump administration’s proposed change is deeply antidemocratic and ignores the voices of people across the nation. In 2023 and 2024, Earthjustice supporters submitted 62,000 comments in support of the new requirements. Comment periods like these for oil and gas lease sales are at risk if the administration gets its way.

Hunters, anglers, ranchers, outdoor recreationists, and all Americans who care about our public lands deserve a voice in decisions that affect the places we live, work, and enjoy ourselves.

Submit a comment to Bureau of Land Management (BLM) urging it not to go through with this rollback.

 

A Bureau of Land Management sign is in the foreground, with an oil derrick behind it.
Vast acreages of public lands used for drilling in Vernal, Utah. (WildEarth Guardians / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

11 Days Remain

Delivery to Bureau of Land Management

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Your Actions Matter

Your messages make a difference, even if we have leaders who don't want to listen. Here's why.

You level the playing field.

Elected officials pay attention when they see that we are paying attention. Read more.

They may be hearing from industry lobbyists left and right, but hearing the stories of their constituents — that’s your power.

Our legislators serve at the pleasure of the people who gave them their job — you.

Make sure your elected officials know whose community and whose values they represent. When you contact your elected official, you’re putting a face and a name on an issue.

Whether or not you voted for them, they work for you, for the duration of their term.

Make sure your elected officials know whose community and whose values they represent. (Find your local, state, and federal elected officials.)

Your action is with us in court.

If a federal agency finalizes a harmful action, the record of public comments provides a basis for bringing them into court. Read more.

Throughout each of the public comment periods we alert you to, Earthjustice’s attorneys are researching and writing in-depth, technical comments to submit — detailing how the regulation could and should be stronger to protect the environment, our communities, and our planet.

We need you to join us — your specific experiences, knowledge, and voice are crucial to add to the Administrative Record through the comment periods.

Lawsuits we file that challenge weak or harmful federal regulations rely on what was submitted during the comment period. The court can only look at documents that are in the Administrative Record — including the public comments — to decide if the agency did something improper.

Your actions aid our litigation. Taking action and submitting comments during a comment period is substantively important.

It’s the law.

Federal agencies must pause what they’re doing and ask for — and consider — your comment. Read more.

Many of us may have never heard of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), but laws like these require our government to ask the public to weigh in before agencies adopt or change regulations.

Regulations essentially describe how federal agencies will carry out laws — including decisions that could undermine science, or weaken safeguards on public health.

Public comments are collected at various points throughout the federal government’s rulemaking process, including when a regulation is proposed and finalized. (Learn about the rulemaking process.) These comments become part of the official, legal public record — the “Administrative Record.”

When the public responds with a huge outpouring of support for environmental protections, these individual messages collectively undercut politicians' attempts to claim otherwise.

What this means is each of us can take a role in shaping the rules our government creates — and ensuring those rules are fair and effective.