Trump Administration Moves to Speed Up Oil Drilling on Federal Lands

The Trump administration proposed in June 2026 to cut costs for oil and gas companies drilling on federal lands and eliminate a key public review process for new drilling permits. Under the current system, the public gets several months to submit comments on drilling proposals. The new plan would replace that with only a 10-day window to formally object — a change that would make it much harder for ordinary people to weigh in on decisions about what happens to government-owned land.

The cost-cutting proposal, reported by Reuters on June 22, removes a formal comment period required by a federal law called NEPA (the National Environmental Policy Act). Right now, when the government proposes to lease drilling rights, companies and the public submit detailed comments on environmental concerns for months. The proposal would cut that out entirely, leaving only a 10-day protest period. For most environmental groups, local governments, and Native American tribes, that's too short to gather facts, draft legal arguments, and file challenges properly.

The Bureau of Land Management oversees more than 21 million acres of public land in the U.S. Last year it held 22 oil and gas lease sales — the most in a single year since this administration began. In 2026 alone, over 1 million acres have been opened to new drilling proposals. Californians alone submitted hundreds of thousands of comments opposing these plans. Removing the longer comment period would make it far harder for that kind of organized public response to happen at all.

What About Drilling Offshore?

The administration's approach to ocean drilling tells a different story. In November 2025, the Department of the Interior launched a new offshore drilling program that includes a full 60-day public comment period. This difference matters. Federal law handles offshore drilling differently than land drilling. Offshore rules, written into the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, have built-in procedural requirements that are harder for the administration to bypass than the onshore rules they're now trying to change.

A Sharp Reversal

The Biden administration went the opposite direction. In January 2021, President Biden signed an executive order pausing new oil and gas leasing on public lands and waters while his team did a full review. That review shaped how quickly permits could be approved and how much companies had to pay to lease the land. It lasted four years and set the baseline for environmental review during that period.

This administration is moving in the exact opposite direction — approving leases faster, charging companies less, and now shrinking the paperwork trail that federal courts use to check whether those decisions were made properly. That last part matters in the courts. When companies or environmental groups sue over a lease decision, judges look at all the documents and comments submitted during the review process to see if the agency followed the law. A shorter review period means less paperwork for judges to examine.

Courts have recently blocked or delayed several BLM leasing decisions because of environmental review problems. A faster process with less documentation might sidestep some of those legal challenges — but it also gives judges less evidence to work with when reviewing whether the lease decision made sense. Federal courts, particularly those in D.C. and the West, have been skeptical of BLM leasing approvals in recent years.

The overall package — lower costs, faster approvals, and more land available — fits the administration's "energy dominance" goal. But here's an important limit: faster government approval does not automatically mean more oil wells pumping. What actually happens depends on whether companies find it profitable to drill, whether pipelines exist to carry the oil, and whether executives want to invest in new wells or return profits to shareholders. Leased land often sits unused for years, even when drilling is allowed.

What does change, and change durably, is who gets to speak in the process. Once a comment period is eliminated through a formal rule, bringing it back requires writing a new rule — a process that takes years and can be challenged in court. Once the system changes, it tends to stay changed.