June 23, 2026 – Yesterday, the Trump administration announced a proposal to all but rescind the 2024 BLM Oil and Gas Rule, a regulation that protected New Mexico taxpayers’ wallets, held oil and gas companies accountable to clean up their messes, and reduced harmful impacts on public lands, water, and wildlife. New Mexico Wild strongly opposes the proposal and urges New Mexicans to submit comments during the 60-day public comment period once the rule is published in the Federal Register.
The proposed rollback would eliminate bonding requirements designed to ensure oil and gas companies bear the full cost of cleanup when drilling operations end. Without these protections, cleanup costs fall on taxpayers, straining public budgets and endangering community health and safety. The proposal would also reduce the public comment period for leasing decisions from 90 days to just ten, cutting off the communities most affected by drilling from meaningful input on decisions about their public lands.
“This is a giveaway to the oil and gas industry, plain and simple,” said Mark Allison, Executive Director of New Mexico Wild. “New Mexico already has abandoned and orphaned wells threatening our land, water, and communities. Weakening bonding requirements means that when these companies walk away, New Mexicans are left holding the bill. Similarly, cutting public comment periods to ten days effectively silences the ranchers, hunters, recreationists, and rural communities who depend on these lands.”
The rollback would also eliminate the 2024 rule’s leasing preference criteria, which directed BLM to weigh factors like fish and wildlife habitat and cultural resources when deciding where to offer leases, ensuring that the most sensitive lands receive the scrutiny they deserve before being opened to drilling.
“The leasing preference criteria added important conservation safeguards to the 2024 rule,” said Sally Paez, New Mexico Wild Staff Attorney. “These criteria gave BLM the tools to steer development away from wildlife habitat and corridors, culturally significant areas, areas with low leasing potential, and places that simply shouldn’t be drilled. Without these guardrails, there’sno mechanism to protect the places and people most at risk from poorly sited development. New Mexicans are fed up with public lands management that puts industry profits above everything else.”
New Mexico is already ground zero for the consequences of inadequate oversight of oil and gas development on federal lands. Colorado College’s 2026 Conservation in the West Poll found that 76% of New Mexicans consider the impacts of oil and gas drilling on our land, air, and water to be a serious problem, and 87% of New Mexicans think that oil and gas companies should pay for their own clean-up and land restoration. A recent report from Taxpayers for Common Sense found that New Mexico’s federal oil and gas boom could have raised billions more for taxpayers under stronger royalty and bonding standards. Nationally, Congress has already spent $4.7 billion in taxpayer funds cleaning up orphaned wells abandoned by the industry, a burden that will only grow if this rollback moves forward.
