Revision to Regulations Regarding Approval of Operations; Valid Period of Approved Application for Permit To Drill

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR <SUBAGY>Bureau of Land Management</SUBAGY> <CFR>43 CFR Part 3170</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. BLM-2025-0136; A2407-014-004-065516; #O2412-014-004-047181.1]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1004-AF39</RIN> <SUBJECT>Revision to Regulations Regarding Approval of Operations; Valid Period of Approved Application for Permit To Drill</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Bureau of Land Management, Interior. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Direct final rule; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This direct final rule (DFR) revises existing Bureau of Land Management (BLM) regulations pertaining to application for permit to drill (APD) to effectuate changes required by the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBB) enacted on July 4, 2025. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The final rule is effective on September 30, 2025, unless significant adverse comments are received by September 2, 2025. If significant adverse comments are received, notice will be published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> before the effective date either withdrawing the rule or issuing a new final rule that responds to any significant adverse comments. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments by one of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov.</E> In the Search box, enter the Docket Number “BLM-2025-0136” and click the “Search” button. Follow the instructions at this website. • <E T="03">Mail, personal, or messenger delivery:</E> U.S. Department of the Interior, Director (630), Bureau of Land Management, 1849 C St. NW, Room 5646, Washington, DC 20240, Attention: 1004-AF39. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Peter Cowan, Senior Minerals Leasing Specialist, email: <E T="03">picowan@blm.gov,</E> telephone: 720-838-1641. Individuals in the United States who are deaf, deafblind, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability may dial 711 (TTY, TDD, or TeleBraille) to access telecommunications relay services. Individuals outside the United States should use the relay services offered within their country to make international calls to the point-of-contact in the United States. For a summary of the rule, please see the abstract description of the document in Docket Number BLM-2025-0136 on <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Oil and gas leasing on Federal lands managed by the BLM is governed primarily by the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 (MLA), 30 U.S.C. 181 <E T="03">et seq.,</E> and other pertinent statutes. See 43 CFR 3100.3. Section 226 of the MLA sets out the general provisions governing oil and gas leasing on Federal lands. Specifically, section 226(p) describes the requirements applicable to issuance of APDs but does not set the term of an approved APD. This has been left to the discretion of the Secretary. In 2024, the BLM promulgated the current regulation at 43 CFR 3171.14(a), which provides for a single, non-renewable term of 3 years for approved APDs. Section 50101(d) of the OBBB amended the MLA by adding a new subparagraph to section 226(p) that establishes a 4-year term for approved APDs. The new subparagraph states that a permit to drill approved under this subsection shall be valid for a single, non-renewable 4-year period beginning on the date that the permit to drill is approved. To implement this required change, the BLM has determined that 43 CFR 3171.14(a) must be revised to reflect this non-discretionary statutory change. The BLM has determined that this reason, independently and alone, justifies the revisions to 43 CFR 3171.14(a). The BLM has no interest in maintaining a regulation that is obsolete and could cause confusion. The BLM is issuing this rule as a DFR. Although the Administrative Procedure Act (APA, 5 U.S.C. 551 through 559) generally requires agencies to engage in notice and comment rulemaking, section 553 of the APA provides an exception when the agency “for good cause finds” that notice and comment are “impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest.” <E T="03">Id.</E> 553(b)(B). The BLM has determined that notice and comment are unnecessary because this rule is noncontroversial; of a minor, technical nature; involves no agency discretion; and is unlikely to receive any significant adverse comments. Significant adverse comments are those that oppose the revision of the rule and raise, alone or in combination, (1) Reasons why the revision of the rule is inappropriate, including challenges to the revision's underlying premise; or (2) Serious unintended consequences of the revision. A comment recommending an addition to the rule will not be considered significant and adverse unless the comment explains how this DFR would be ineffective without the addition. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Procedural Matters</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Executive Order (E.O.) 12630—Governmental Actions and Interference With Constitutionally Protected Property Rights</HD> This rule does not result in a taking of private property or otherwise have regulatory takings implications under E.O. 12630. The rule rescinds an obsolete regulatory provision and replaces it with the new statutory provision; therefore, the rule will not result in private property being taken for public use without just compensation. A takings implication assessment is not required. <HD SOURCE="HD2">E.O. 12866—Regulatory Planning and Review and Executive Order 13563—Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review</HD> E.O. 12866 provides that the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will review all significant rules. OIRA has determined that this rule is not significant. E.O. 13563 reaffirms the principles of E.O. 12866, while calling for improvements in the Nation's regulatory system to promote predictability, reduce uncertainty, and use the best, most innovative, and least burdensome tools for achieving regulatory ends. E.O. 13563 directs agencies to consider regulatory approaches that reduce burdens and maintain flexibility and freedom of choice for the public where these approaches are relevant, feasible, and consistent with regulatory objectives. E.O. 13563 emphasizes further that agencies must base regulations on the best available science and that the rulemaking process must allow for public participation and an open exchange of ideas. The BLM developed this rule in a manner consistent with these requirements. <HD SOURCE="HD2">E.O. 12988—Civil Justice Reform</HD> This DFR complies with the requirements of E.O. 12988. Among other things, this rule: (a) Meets the criteria of section 3(a) requiring that all regulations be reviewed to eliminate errors and ambiguity and be written to minimize litigation; (b) Meets the criteria of section 3(b)(2) requiring that all regulations be written in clear language and contain clear legal standards. <HD SOURCE="HD2">E.O. 13132—Federalism</HD> Under the criteria of section 1 of E.O. 13132, this rule does not have sufficient federalism implications to warrant the preparation of a federalism summary impact statement. This rule will not have substantial direct effects on the States, on the relationship between the national government and the States, or on the distribution of power and responsibilities among the various levels of government. A federalism summary impact statement is not required. <HD SOURCE="HD2">E.O. 13175—Consultation and Coordination With Indian Tribal Governments</HD> The Department of the Interior strives to strengthen its government-to-government relationship with Indian tribes through a commitment to consultation with Tribes and recognition of their right to self-governance and Tribal sovereignty. The BLM evaluated this DFR under Executive Order 13175 and the Department's consultation policies and determined that it has no substantial direct effects on federally recognized Indian Tribes and that consultation under the Department's Tribal consultation policies is not required. The rule merely revises the Federal regulations to remove obsolete regulatory language. <HD SOURCE="HD2">E.O. 13211—Actions Concerning Regulations That Significantly Affect Energy Supply, Distribution, or Use</HD> This DFR is not a significant energy action as defined in E.O. 13211. Therefore, a Statement of Energy Effects is not required. <HD SOURCE="HD2">National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)</HD> This DFR does not constitute a major Federal action significantly affecting the quality of the human environment. A detailed statement under NEPA (42 U.S.C. 4321 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) is not required because this rule is covered by a categorical exclusion applicable to regulatory functions “that are of an administrative, financial, legal, technical, or procedural nature.” 43 CFR 46.210(i). In addition, the BLM has determined that this rule does not involve any of the extraordinary circumstances listed in 43 CFR 46.215 that would require further analysis under NEPA. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Paperwork Reduction Act</HD> This rule does not impose any new information collection burden under the Paperwork Reduction Act. OMB previously approved the information collection activities contained in the existing regulations and assigned OMB control number 1004-0220. This rule does not impose an information collection burden because the BLM is not making any changes to the information collection requirements. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Regulatory Flexibility Act</HD> The Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA, 5 U.S.C. 601-612) requires an agency to prepare a regulatory flexibility analysis for all rules unless the agency certifies that the rule will not have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities. The RFA applies only to rules for ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 13k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━