MEMO: An ‘Energy Dominance’ outlook for 2026

After the 2024 election, the Trump administration wasted no time advancing a dangerous fossil fuel agenda that prioritized oil and gas profits over the health and wellbeing of communities and public lands. 

By declaring a national energy emergency and directing agencies to “unleash” fossil fuel production, the administration opened more doors to unnecessary oil and gas drilling across public lands, even at a time when more than 81% of public lands in the West managed by the BLM are already available to drilling. 

Leaders in Congress quickly fell in line, passing the Budget Reconciliation Bill, aka the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which aims to give the industry unfettered access to over 200 million acres of public lands. The law ultimately made drilling on federal public lands cheaper and easier.  

Now, a little more than a year into the second Trump administration, the White House and allies in Congress are showing no signs of letting up, forcing an ‘energy dominance’ agenda that caters to fossil fuels and suppresses sources like wind and solar. 

Common-sense leasing and drilling reforms on shaky ground 

The administration plans to rescind or substantially revise what remains in the BLM Oil and Gas Leasing Rule, finalized in 2024, which made long overdue reforms to the federal leasing program. 

• Most notably, the rule held oil and gas companies responsible for covering their own cleanup costs once they were finished drilling—a requirement called bonding. If the rule returns to the drastically inadequate pre-2024 bonding rates, taxpayers will be back on the hook for cleaning up and capping methane-leaking, orphaned and abandoned wells when the drillers go bankrupt or leave town.  
• Despite over 90% of Western voters agreeing that oil and gas companies should pay to clean up their messes, the administration and Congress are moving forward with leasing and drilling plans that could increase the number of leaking, abandoned wells exponentially. A new analysis found oil and gas industry is poised to drill as many as 3.8 million wells on public lands – passing $753 billion in liabilities onto taxpayers. Read more on bonding.
• The rule also shaped which industry-nominated lands BLM offers up for lease. It steered lease offerings toward areas near existing oil and gas infrastructure and with higher production potential, while steering it away from wildlife habitat and migration corridors, recreation areas, historic sites and other conflict-prone lands. The reconciliation bill’s leasing mandate stands in conflict with this sensible practice. 

Bigger, dangerous lease sales across the West, 4x a year 

The reconciliation bill now makes quarterly lease sales in many Western states mandatory, regardless of industry interest. Companies are effectively able to point to any eligible parcel on a map, nominate it, pay next to nothing and attain a lease within roughly three to 18 months.  

Forcing leasing despite public opposition  

In September, BLM announced the first Colorado lease sale of 2026 set for March, which is the largest since 2018. The proposed parcels in the sale overlapped with wilderness-quality lands, wildlife habitat and Front Range communities. Despite the BLM continuing to offer bigger lease sales, the vast majority of BLM lands, including 74% of lands in Colorado, are already open to oil and gas drilling. 

The reconciliation bill also eliminated the nominal $5/acre expression of interest fee companies must pay when nominating parcels for lease, opening the floodgates for larger lease sales and speculative leasing and developers hoarding lands to pad their investment portfolios.  

The bill makes it harder for BLM to say “no” if an oil and gas company decides it wants to lease an eligible and available parcel of public land, even in response to public opposition and significant conservation and environmental impacts. This means lands next door to national parks, state parks, recreation areas, schools, and medical and community centers could soon have drill pads and pump jacks as new neighbors – regardless of public opposition. Lease sales that overlap with places people care about can be tracked using this map.  

Forcing leasing even when nobody is interested 

The reconciliation bill forces leasing even in cases when there is no industry interest and requires a replacement sale if there are no bids received on 25% or more of the acreage offered during a previous sale. In December, the BLM held an additional sale in Wyoming, because the first sale did so terribly, and only two of the re-offered parcels received bids. 

Similarly, in Colorado, BLM offered a replacement sale at the beginning of January to attempt to re-offer the 40% of parcels that previously went unsold, and didn’t receive a single bid on these re-offered parcels. Holding a lease sale the industry obviously doesn’t want is a blatant waste of tax dollars, and it’s coming at a time when agency staff have been decimated by staff reductions, shutdowns and overwhelmed with political directives.  

Methane waste limits no more? 

The BLM published a final methane waste prevention rule in 2024, to reduce the waste of natural gas from drilling on federal and Tribal lands. The final rule took steps to reduce waste from routine venting and flaring of gas at well-sites. But the BLM is now working to “rewrite” the rule, and they recently pushed back the deadline for oil and gas companies to comply with the standards. The nominee to be the next BLM director, Steve Pearce, has also worked against implementation of the BLM rule. 

Government loophole sends public lands management into chaos 

When Republican members of Congress voted in the fall to use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to overturn four Resource Management Plans and plan amendments in Alaska, Montana, North Dakota, and Wyoming, land management plans for national forests, national parks and national wildlife refuges were all sent into question. 

No one knows for certain what this could mean for existing authorizations under those plans – including grazing permits, timber sales, recreation authorizations, wildfire management projects across hundreds of millions of acres nationwide, or over 5,000 oil and gas leases across nearly four million acres. 

Most recently, House leaders radically used the CRA to swipe down a mining ban in the headwaters of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, potentially putting a target on a range of long-settled mineral withdrawals and other public lands actions. 

New data and analyses to support your reporting: 

• A recent analysis indicates that as of January 2025, more than 81% of all BLM-administered lands in the Western United States remain open to oil and gas leasing, and includes an accompanying map.
• A new economic report on the difference between technologically recoverable and economically recoverable oil and gas reserves, whether fossil fuel dominance improves energy security and whether lack of access is a problem worth declaring an energy emergency. 
• Upcoming federal oil and gas lease sale tracker.  
• A recent analysis on emissions and health risks of repealing bonding requirements. 

For questions or more information, don’t hesitate to reach out: Emily Denny, Communications Manager, edenny@tws.org