California’s Oil & Gas Leasing Door Is Creaking Open Again
Not a lease sale yet. Still a turning point.
The federal government is not holding a new oil and gas lease sale in California this week. It is doing the step before that, the one that decides what is even possible. The Bureau of Land Management has released two draft supplemental environmental impact statements, one for the Central Coast Field Office and one for the Bakersfield Field Office, covering large stretches of central and south-central California.
The public comment window runs through March 6, 2026, and the agency has scheduled virtual public meetings on January 29, 2026 for the Central Coast plan and February 3, 2026 for the Bakersfield plan.
The Central Coast planning area includes counties like Monterey, San Benito, Santa Clara, and Santa Cruz, plus portions of Fresno, Merced, and San Joaquin, covering about 284,000 acres of public land and about 509,000 acres of federal mineral estate.
The Bakersfield planning area includes counties like Kern, Kings, Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Tulare, covering about 400,000 acres of public land and about 1.2 million acres of federal mineral estate. Both documents are framed as a response to settlement agreements tied to federal court cases, which is the government way of saying, “we got sued and now we have to redo the analysis.”
This still has a (relatively) long runway.
Comments come first, then a final supplemental environmental impact statement, then a signed record of decision. After that, the leasing decisions can still be appealed to the Interior Board of Land Appeals. The Bakersfield draft also folds in supplemental information for seven lease parcels totaling 4,134 acres that were leased in December 2020, which is a reminder that some of this is not hypothetical.
Now the part that matters for public lands.
Oil and gas development does not arrive as a single neat pin on a map. It arrives as a network. Roads, pads, pipelines, traffic, noise, and light. Habitat gets chopped into smaller pieces, edges creep inward, and “pristine” turns into “managed around.” Scientists have found that noise associated with oil and gas development can change how wildlife uses habitat, including effects documented for birds and big game in some landscapes.
Then there is the unglamorous mess: soil compaction and vegetation removal from pad construction, erosion, and the very real possibility of leaks, spills, and waste discharges that can degrade soils, surface water, and groundwater. California’s own scientific review of well stimulation flags the familiar package of risks that come with oil and gas production more broadly: habitat loss and fragmentation, invasive species, water contamination, water diversion, noise and light pollution, and vehicle traffic.
One key nuance: this is not the government saying it will drill inside national parks or inside designated wilderness. Those areas are generally off-limits. But “not inside the boundary” is not the same thing as “no impact.” Industrial activity does not stay neatly on its side of the fence. And when the ecology next door is still intact, even small new industrial footprints can punch above their weight.
If the country insists some oil and gas is still necessary, the land deserves a hard boundary: disturbance-first siting, tight surface stipulations, and a bias toward already-industrial zones. Not new carve-ups.
Thank you for reading! I highlight threats to public lands and the energy industry’s impact. I believe clean energy is the future, and ALL energy projects should prioritize private land first to keep wild places wild. When energy extraction is needed on public lands all projects must restore the land after extraction. Public lands are unique and once lost, they’re gone forever.
Sources:
DOI & BLM - BLM seeks input on proposed oil and gas management updates in central coast region
DOI & BLM - BLM seeks input on proposed oil and gas management updates in south-central California
DOI & BLM - California Oil and Gas Lease Sales
Federal Register - Notice of Availability of the Draft Central Coast Field Office Oil and Gas, Leasing and Development Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, California (Central Coast Field Office)
Federal Register - Notice of Availability of the Draft Bakersfield Field Office Oil and Gas Leasing and Development Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, California (Bakersfield Field Office)