STATEMENT on final passage of budget reconciliation bill

Bill contains massive tax cuts for oil and gas industry and prioritizes drilling on public lands

DENVER—The U.S. Congress has passed the so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill.”

The bill contains a number of attacks on public lands, including reforms to the federal oil and gas leasing system that heavily favor the oil industry over taxpayers and the environment. These changes include a reduction in royalty rates that will result in a projected loss of $6 billion in federal oil and gas revenue over the next decade, mandatory quarterly lease sales including all eligible public lands, the revival of noncompetitive leasing, and an end to nomination fees.

The Center for Western Priorities released the following statement from Executive Director Jennifer Rokala: 

“This bill is a handout to billionaires at the expense of working people. It gives a multi-billion dollar tax cut to the oil and gas industry, which is already raking in sky-high profits, and adds billions to the federal debt.

“This bill cuts the public out of public land management, making oil and gas drilling the dominant use of public land and removing avenues for public participation from the leasing process. The vast majority of Westerners want to see public lands managed for clean air and water, as well as wildlife habitat conservation and increased recreation access. This bill does the opposite. The lawmakers who voted for this bill turned their backs on American taxpayers and their own constituents to give tax breaks to billionaires and handouts to the oil and gas industry. Westerners will lose access to public land and wildlife will lose the habitats they depend on, thanks to the regressive oil and gas provisions and corporate handouts in this bill.”

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This bill rolls back important reforms made to the onshore oil and gas program since 2022, which brought about more effective management of national public lands and a more balanced approach to oil and gas leasing. Thanks to these reforms, companies stopped nominating vast tracts of land for auction that they had no intention of bidding on, and the Bureau of Land Management prioritized leasing in areas with high potential for extraction and minimal conflicts with other public land resources. Additionally, increased royalty and lease rates did not deter companies from bidding on land they had legitimate interest in developing. As a result, lease sales informed by these critical updates have generated increasingly greater per-acre bids and resulted in a significant decrease in the proportion of public lands being wastefully offered at oil and gas lease auctions.

Additionally, Western voters overwhelmingly support reforms that safeguard wildlife, public lands, and drinking water, and protect taxpayers. Colorado College’s 2025 State of the Rockies Project Conservation in the West poll found that 72 percent of Western voters prefer their members of Congress prioritize conservation over energy production on public lands, versus just 24 percent who prefer we maximize the amount of public land available for drilling (the widest margin in the poll’s 15-year history).

Learn more about the negative onshore oil and gas reforms in the budget bill in our recent blog post and more about the positive effects the Biden-era reforms have had on leasing in our Trump drilling dashboard.

For more information, visit westernpriorities.org. To speak with an expert on public lands, contact Kate Groetzinger at 254-652-0067 or kate@westernpriorities.org. Sign up for Look West to get daily public lands and energy news sent to your inbox.

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The Center for Western Priorities is a conservation policy and advocacy organization focused on land and energy issues across the American West.