Record BLM Lease Sale Signals a New Era for Federal Oil and Natural Gas Development 

June 12, 2026

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) set a new record last month when oil and natural gas producers bid more than $4 billion at the quarterly lease sale in New Mexico—more than quadruple the amount of the previous record. The blockbuster sale demonstrates how the Trump Administration’s efforts to spur energy production on federal lands are providing meaningful benefits for the American people. And this wasn’t a one-off event—policies of this Administration to boost federal lands production are also seen in other less visible, but equally important metrics in BLM’s recently released statistics for fiscal year 2025. 
 
While natural gas production from BLM lands has steadily trended up for the past 15 years, oil production was declining year-over-year at the start of the first Trump Administration. A commitment to American energy dominance and regulatory reform kickstarted the turnaround in federal oil production. 
 
Biden-era Polices Stifled Federal Lands Development, with Lease Offers Plummeting as Operating Costs Increased 

Because it takes years to move from the leasing process to the permitting process at BLM to actual production, there is always a time lag in seeing the impact of an administration’s leasing and permitting policies. When royalties generated from oil and natural gas on BLM lands more than doubled from 2021 to 2022, most of that production would have been from leases that were issued during a prior administration. Royalty revenue has held steady at nearly quadruple the amount from 2016 and 2017.  

At the same time as royalty revenue was skyrocketing, bonus bids generated from leasing plummeted under the Biden Administration as BLM initially refused to hold quarterly lease sales as required under the law.  

Although provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) tied renewable energy development to mandatory oil and gas leasing targets, that law also dramatically increased the costs of operating on federal lands, including a higher royalty rate and new and heightened fees. The result, as we can see in BLM’s data below, was a dramatic decrease in lands both offered and bid on in sales conducted by the Biden Administration. 

President Trump’s Energy Dominance Agenda is Restoring Confidence to Federal Lands Management 

The second Trump Administration has reaffirmed a commitment to energy dominance, and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) made structural changes to federal leasing that have spurred renewed interest in federal lands. OBBBA lowered or removed the IRA’s fees and royalty rate, reiterated the requirement to hold quarterly sales and set timing limits on processing expressions of interest (EOI) in parcels – i.e. how companies tell BLM what land it wants to purchase.  
 
Expressions of interest soared in 2025 to more than 2.4 million acres, from a low of just 94,361 acres in 2023, and sales in states such as Colorado are setting records for the amount of acreage offered at individual sales.  

Beyond the demand for more acreage overall, the recent New Mexico sale also demonstrates the value of individual parcels, as the sale set a new record for the highest per-acre bid at more than $350,000. This reflects an appetite for future leasing of federal acreage that suggests the record-breaking New Mexico lease sale is just a sign of things to come. 

Once a company has a lease on a federal parcel, they still need a federal permit to drill each individual well. In the states, these routine permits are generally approved in around 20 days.  Under the previous Administration, the average time was upwards of a year. Delays and uncertainty around APDs can make federal acreage less attractive than private and state lands, which contributed to the downward trends in federal oil production. But BLM is also working to meaningfully improve the backlog in APDs. The agency approved 5,740 Applications to Permit to Drill in FY25 — up from 3,322 in FY24 and more than double the 2,852 approved in FY22. BLM’s renewed commitment to processing APDs in a timely manner will give companies certainty that they can align their drilling schedules to include federal lands, knowing they will have necessary permits in hand when the time comes to drill.  

Establishing Durable Permit Predictability is Critical to Securing America’s Energy Security 

A renewed commitment to responsible development of our federal lands at the Department of the Interior and across the administration, combined with the substantial impact of the policy changes enacted in the OBBBA, will help ensure federal oil and natural gas production continues the upward trajectory. But there’s still work to be done. Congress should seize the opportunity to build on this progress by passing comprehensive permitting reform. By advancing policy durability, Congress can bolster the ability of federal lands to compete for investment regardless of the political party in power.