Joe and Nancy Rankin’s ranch, just north of Douglas, Wyoming, has been in the family for 80 years. As Joe Rankin manages the ranch, he keeps track of any oil drilling underneath their land. But, due to a controversial federal proposal, his ability to influence or even comment on such operations may soon evaporate. His property and others nearby are already impacted by drilling.
“Some spots in my area right now look like a spaghetti bowl from all the pipelines that are going through,” Rankin said.
Tracking drilling, for Rankin, also means managing environmental consequences and personal headaches. Leaks from abandoned or “orphaned” wells affect his cattle and cause bovine health issues, he said. At one point during a blizzard, his herd ended up stranded in a ditch where developers were trying to build a pipeline. Another time, he found Bureau of Land Management officials driving across his pasture and had to convince them that they should not be there.
Rankin’s property is a “split estate,” meaning that he and many of his neighbors do not own the rights to the minerals underneath their ranches. The mineral rights — which are owned, in this case, by the BLM and leased to interested oil and gas companies — are separate from surface rights to the ranch’s grass, soil and buildings. And mineral rights are dominant over surface property rights, meaning that the companies that acquire them often have the ability to access surface property and house equipment there, even if the landowner objects.
Historically, the public has been given a total of 90 days to weigh in on any leasing of BLM-managed minerals. Oil and gas companies were also required to identify surface owners whose land may be impacted by proposed underground development, and the BLM was required to notify them. But soon, Rankin and other Western landowners may lose that right: In a June leasing proposal, the BLM proposed reducing the general public comment periods to 10 days and eliminating the landowner notification requirement for split estate land. Separately, the agency also wants to reduce the minimum bonds companies are required to pay in case drilling is abandoned without environmental cleanup. The changes would apply to oil and gas as well as to other subterranean natural resources managed by the agency.
The public comment window for the BLM’s proposed changes ends Monday, Aug. 24
Comments are accepted at TinyURL.com/splitestatecomment.
Industry interests praised the proposal as beneficial for smaller companies and important for growth. But many landowners and local government officials say the proposal will remove public input, impede landowner rights and jeopardize community health.
Wyoming’s influential ranching lobby opposes the changes to public comment, and Douglas Mayor Kim Pexton, Montana state Rep. Shelly Fyant and New Mexico rancher Don Schreiber penned a joint op-ed in WyoFile criticizing the split estate proposal and the other two changes. All told, there are nearly 58 million acres of split-estate land across the U.S., an area roughly the size of Wyoming. Montana and Wyoming have the two largest amounts: over 11 million acres, an area five times larger than Yellowstone National Park and the Wind River Reservation.
‘Count your fingers’
The division of land rights is common in the rural U.S., especially in the West. It’s partly a relic of early 20th century policy intended to promote Westward expansion while preserving underground minerals for extraction. North of Douglas, most landowners own split-estate land, according to Rankin. Wyomingites and other Westerners have spent decades in state legislatures and courts battling over whose rights take precedence: companies’ or landowners’.
The proposed changes in split-estate management align with the Trump administration’s long-stated goal of bolstering and deregulating the energy industry. In a press release announcing the proposal, the Interior Department, which oversees the BLM, said it expects the change to benefit small oil and gas companies.
“These targeted updates cut through the red tape that has historically deterred investment, ensuring our public lands remain a reliable engine for economic growth and innovation,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said.
“Another company, when you shake hands, you count your fingers when you’re done to make sure you have them all.”
Rural communities will be impacted the most, according to Gwen Lachelt, the founder of Western Leaders Network, which advocates for conservation and democracy. She added that the proposal represents a notable change in the BLM’s previous values.
“This has always been an agency that has been difficult to work with, but it has been an agency in the past that has valued the input of the public and has respected landowner rights,” Lachelt said.
For the most part, Rankin said, working with the BLM and with drilling companies has been amicable. But the experience can vary depending on the company.
“One company just falls over backwards to take care of us,” he said. “Another company, when you shake hands, you count your fingers when you’re done to make sure you have them all.”
Public comment
When companies express interest in leasing and extracting underground minerals, the BLM currently requires firms to identify surface landowners who may be impacted. The BLM is then required to notify those landowners, often ranchers, with a letter or a phone call.
Separately, the agency currently offers three 30-day periods for public comment on all leasing: during the initial scoping period, after an environmental review and then a final opportunity to protest. The proposed changes would reduce the public input period to 10 days by eliminating the first two comment periods and cutting the final protest window by two-thirds.
Jim Magagna, a rancher from Rock Springs and the executive vice president of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, called the proposed public comment reduction unreasonable.
“Our people are out busy,” Magagna said, occupied with “haying, or they’re feeding cows, or they’re calving, or they’re shipping. And a 10-day comment period?”
By ending landowner notification requirements and slashing the comment window, the BLM is essentially removing landowners’ right to comment, Magagna said. At a minimum, he added, surface owners should “definitely” be notified before minerals are put up for lease.
The BLM, meanwhile, says it doesn’t plan to notify landowners because the Mineral Leasing Act, which governs extraction on public land, doesn’t require the agency to do so. Notification, the BLM says in federal documents, “imposes undue burdens on the oil and gas industry.”
Public comment doesn’t just benefit landowners with concerns, Lachelt said. It is also good for companies that may have overlooked details of their drilling plans.
“I’ve worked with really incredible federal personnel with the BLM who take every single comment to heart, and they have improved applications immensely based on public feedback, because no one knows their land better than those people who are being directly drilled on,” she said.
BLM officials said the reduced comment period is designed to eliminate repetitive review, and that the concerns raised in public comment periods can likely be addressed through other elements of the leasing process, like larger-scale land-use planning.
“Shortening the protest period from 30 to 10 days streamlines the lease‑sale process while preserving opportunities for public input at other stages,” a BLM spokesperson told High Country News in a statement.
Bond levels
The June announcement also proposed a change to the bond levels implemented by the Biden administration, which received widespread media coverage at the time. In contrast, the recent Trump administration proposal has received far less fanfare; many Douglas landowners had not even heard of the proposal several weeks after its release. Bonds act as collateral, charged in case a company abandons a drilling site without proper environmental cleanup. The bond money is used to plug orphaned wells and repair any environmental damage.
“That is a worst-case scenario, and it is something that we work hard within our organization, within our industry to avoid,” said Aaron Johnson, vice president of public and legislative affairs with the Western Energy Alliance.
“That is a worst-case scenario, and it is something that we work hard within our organization, within our industry to avoid.”
A 2023 U.S. Geological Survey analysis documented over 1,000 orphaned wells in Wyoming alone, with thousands more scattered across the West, though the study found that the rate of “orphaning” appeared to decline with newer wells. In federal documents, the BLM acknowledges that reducing the bond amounts may delay orphaned well reclamation.
From 1951 to 2024, the federal government set bond levels at $25,000 for statewide leases. In 2024, the Biden administration raised that amount to $500,000 to address inflation and prioritize covering the costs associated with cleanup.
If adjusted just for inflation, the U.S. Government Accountability Office estimated in a 2019 report that statewide bond amounts would be around $198,000. Rankin, the Wyoming rancher, supports a higher bond level.
“It gives them more incentive to care,” Rankin said, speaking of private companies.
But the Western Energy Alliance’s Johnson called the Biden-era bond increase excessive, adding that the Trump administration’s proposed reduction would likely benefit small- and medium-sized companies.
“Going from $25,000 to $500,000 is punitive, and that half a million dollars is just sitting idle,” Johnson said.
The BLM agrees.
“Returning minimum bond levels to $10,000 for leases and $25,000 statewide reduces barriers for smaller operators while continuing to ensure adequate reclamation coverage,” the agency spokesperson said.
This story was produced as part of the Western Environmental Reporting Collaborative, a partnership between Wyoming Public Media, High Country News, Report for America and local news organizations across the West.
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