The Department of the Interior announced Thursday it would no longer require the Bureau of Land Management to produce an environmental impact statement for thousands of oil and gas leases in seven states, including New Mexico.
The more than 3,200 impacted leases are spread across Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming and cover approximately 3.5 million acres, including several parcels in the Permian Basin.
An environmental impact statement hasn’t always been required; the move, in response to an executive order from President Donald Trump geared at boosting American energy development, reverses a Biden-era effort to further investigate the environmental impact of leasing decisions previously challenged in court.
In January, the BLM announced it would review environmental analyses for leasing decisions that were challenged during the first Trump administration. Plaintiffs in several cases argued the bureau hadn’t adequately taken climate change or the cumulative impacts of oil and gas into consideration when making leasing decisions.
As a result of the litigation, the agency decided to prepare environmental impact statements for thousands of leases in several Western states to address gaps identified in the lawsuits and ensure the bureau was complying with the National Environmental Policy Act and other regulations.
In its Thursday news release, the bureau seemed to indicate it would try to make sure it followed the law through other means — just not through the “lengthy” environmental impact statement.
The BLM is “evaluating options for compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act” for upcoming leasing decisions, the news release states.
“They’re acknowledging that … by getting rid of this, that is one pathway to coming into compliance that they’re not going to do. But they still are sort of saying ‘We’ve got to do something,’ ” said Kyle Tisdel, an attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center who worked on several of the cases.
“Of course, all of this comes within this broader context of the deregulation that the administration is doing through all of these suites of executive orders … [and] this broader push to just basically try to fast-track oil and gas and fossil fuel production on public lands,” Tisdel added.
The move comes as all five members of New Mexico’s all-Democratic U.S. House and Senate delegation reintroduced legislation Thursday to permanently protect federally owned lands surrounding the Chaco Culture National Historic Park in northwestern New Mexico from new mineral leasing. A temporary mineral withdrawal, which prevented new oil, gas and mineral leasing in a 10-mile radius around the park for the next 20 years, was finalized in 2023.
“When we visit Chaco Canyon and the Greater Chaco Region, we better understand America’s ancient history and wisdom about astronomy,” Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández said in a statement. “It is a sacred area that educates, inspires, and compels us to reflect on our shared history and the communities we love today.”
After a proposed 20-year withdrawal of parts Upper Pecos watershed from new mining development was spiked earlier this month, concerns have arisen that Chaco Canyon could be next on the list. The “Unleashing American Energy” executive order directs the leaders of the agriculture and interior departments to reevaluate public land withdrawals. The withdrawn area around Chaco is also listed in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint as a candidate for reversal.
The majority of New Mexico’s oil and gas production occurs on federal lands.
According to a 2023 fact sheet produced by economists on the state Legislative Finance Committee, oil and gas production in the state has been growing faster on federal lands than on state, private or tribal lands.
“As a result, a growing share of New Mexico’s production is subject to federal royalties,” the sheet stated.
The federal government receives the royalties then splits the proceeds with with the state.
In 2024, the BLM conducted three lease sales in New Mexico, reaping a total $95.5 million. Earlier this year, the agency announced it had leased more than 1,300 acres in the state, receiving almost $20.7 million for its quarterly oil and gas lease sale.
Like the name suggests, an environmental impact statement is required by NEPA if the federal government is planning to do something that would “significantly affect the quality of the human environment.” It’s a higher bar than an environmental assessment, which is used to determine if a project will have a big enough impact that an environmental impact statement is required.
The same executive order, “Unleashing American Energy,” that prompted the department’s announcement, also reversed an executive order signed by President Jimmy Carter that directed the Council on Environmental Quality to create regulations for federal agencies on how to implement NEPA.
With that order gone, according to an interim rule published by the council, it may no longer have the authority to require federal agencies to follow the environmental regulation.
That interim rule is set to go into effect Friday. It will remove the implementing regulations for NEPA and directs individual federal agencies to revise or draft their own NEPA-implementing regulations in the next year.
In February, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said NEPA had to be “weaponized” to stymie development. Many Republican-run states agree; attorneys general in 20 states last year sued the Biden administration over what they said was an increasingly lengthy and expensive process.
A January report by the Council on Environmental Quality indicated the time to complete an environmental impact statement was actually dropping. In 2024, the median time for all federal agencies to complete such a review was 2.2 years, a year and a half shorter than in 2019, and an increasing number of statements have been completed in less than two years.
Tisdel said he thinks communicating with the public about proposed projects can speed timelines.
“The timing and the delay that [environmental impact statements] cause is well-founded,” Tisdel said. “But I think the idea that we are just going to gut these sort of bedrock environmental laws along the way is probably the wrong way to do it. I think part of the response needs to be in not … getting rid of the checks and balances, but giving meaning to what it means to engage the public.”
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