Federal Oil and Gas Well Bonding: Undoing Biden
2nd September 2026
The Biden Administration enacted hundreds of punitive actions against the domestic oil and gas industry. The Trump Administration has worked to reverse this overreach. The latest reversal concerns a Bureau of Land Management’s proposal to lower statewide bonding on oil and gas leases from $500,000 to $25,000.
In protest, the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN) and other left-of-center environmental organizations claim that companies will be incited to abandon wells and stick taxpayers with the cleanup bill. EEN misleadingly argues that “asking companies to cover their own cleanup costs is not a regulatory burden….”
To clarify, the BLM is proposing to shift the state bonding minimums back to what they were prior to 2024, consistent with the White House’s intent to reduce regulatory barriers to energy production. The higher minimums imposed in 2024 have not taken effect yet, as the BLM had extended the phase-in date to June of 2027.