Take a moment right now to add your voice in favor of protecting our national public lands.

The Bureau of Land Management (part of the Department of Interior) decides oil and gas leasing rules on all national public lands. That's right, our Mon National Forest and America's newest National Park, the New River Gorge, depend on BLM rules to make sure our unique and precious national public lands are managed wisely.

BLM has not revised the oil and gas leasing rules for more than 60 years! Fortunately, the BLM has proposed comprehensive new rules to modernize oil and gas leasing requirements to assure that the extractors pay the true costs. These rule revisions will return the cost and burden to the extractor, saving taxpayers’ dollars. In summary, these rules will modernize oil and gas leasing while better protecting our national public lands:

• Set fees to reflect the true costs of applications.
• Increase bond fees to reflect the true costs of remediation while also considering future inflation.
• Ending deals that favor extractors such as nationwide bonds and unit operator bonds, ending unfair and costly non-competitive bid leasing, and making sure companies buying out existing leases are real companies separate from the previous lease owner.
• Increasing the reporting requirements and requiring actions on temporarily idle wells on a specified schedule to avoid abandoned well situations.

These proposals are good and will help national public lands. We also like to make sure that climate impacts are considered in issuing all leases and that our West Virginia Rivers are protected from oil and gas extraction.

Together, we can assure our national public lands remain strong and that oil and gas leases don't burden taxpayers, our climate, and our health.

The Public Comment period ends September 22, 2023. Act NOW and tell the Bureau of Land Management that you want modernized oil and gas leasing rules to protect our national public lands!