Comments closed August 24
Stop BLM from cutting royalties on wasted oil and gas
Bureau of Land Management · Federal onshore oil and gas leases, Indian trust lands
- What
- A rule change would let oil and gas companies waste more fuel on federal and tribal lands without paying what they owe.
- Where
- Federal onshore oil and gas leases, Indian trust lands
- How much
- Taxpayers and tribal communities stand to lose royalty revenue when oil and gas is vented, flared, or spilled on federal and Indian trust lands.
- Decided
- Comments closed August 24, 2026. No decision document is on file yet.Date from Federal Register ↗, read June 25, 2026.
Where these four lines come from
- WhatOur plain-English read of the Federal Register 2026-12738 ↗. Check it against the agency’s own words under Case.
- WhereThe places and states the notice names, as PLAN read them.
- How muchThe first sentence of our What’s at risk read of the notice; the whole read is under Case.
- DecidedAugust 24, 2026, from Federal Register, the document’s comment close date (federalregister.gov) ↗. Read June 25, 2026. The decision document is the one on file in PLAN’s record.
- Read from PLAN’s record November 10, 2026.
Lanny E. Erdos
Director, Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation, and Enforcement, Exercising Authority of the Assistant Secretary, Land and Minerals Management
A person signed this, not an agency. The window has closed and the signature stands, which is exactly when accountability matters.
Short is better. You are asking Assistant Secretary Erdos to answer for a decision their office made.
My name is [your name] and I'm calling from [your city and state]. Lanny E. Erdos, Director, Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation, and Enforcement, Exercising Authority of the Assistant Secretary, Land and Minerals Management, signed the decision on Stop BLM from cutting royalties on wasted oil and gas. I'm asking that office to answer for it publicly. Please record that I called and tell me what the office intends to do.
Official channels only, about this decision. No personal phone numbers, no home addresses, no personal social accounts, and nothing abusive. The point is to make the office answer, and an abusive call is the one thing that lets it off the hook.
What the proposal said, and what the decision did
No figure from the proposal has been checked against the decision on this fight yet. What the record does hold is the issues ledger below.
No decision document is on PLAN’s record for this fight yet. When the agency’s decision lands, what it answered goes here.
PLAN's read: high threat
A rule change would let oil and gas companies waste more fuel on federal and tribal lands without paying what they owe.
What’s at risk
If this goes through
Our plain-English read of the official notice ↗. Check it against the agency’s own words below.
In the agency’s own words
In response to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, enacted on July 4, 2025, and Executive Order (E.O.) 14154, entitled, "Unleashing American Energy," dated January 20, 2025, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is proposing to modify its existing regulations pertaining to royalties due on oil and natural gas lost on Federal and Indian leases. These modifications would reduce unnecessary compliance burdens for operators and streamline the BLM's royalty determinations on lost oil or natural gas.
Who signs it
Lanny E. Erdos
Director, Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation, and Enforcement, Exercising Authority of the Assistant Secretary, Land and Minerals Management
Where the notice says so
The ground
The window has closed, so there’s no watch to set on it here.
In court on this ground
This fight isn’t bound to a land unit in PLAN’s record yet, so there are no court cases to show for its ground.
Who holds the vote
PLAN’s record doesn’t tie a member of Congress to this fight yet. The scorecard grades the votes and bills that decide public lands; nothing joins a vote or a bill to this decision, so there’s no member to name here without guessing.
See how your members vote ↗Know an open comment period we are missing, or spotted a wrong deadline? .
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