in effect
This is a final rule from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), effective December 17, 2025, that cancels and replaces a 2024 regulation governing how the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPR-A) — a roughly 23-million-acre federal area on Alaska’s North Slope — is managed. The BLM determined the 2024 rule exceeded its legal authority under the Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act of 1976 (NPRPA) and was inconsistent with current national energy policy.
The 2024 rule had established a default presumption against permitting new oil and gas activity in designated “special areas” unless an operator could clearly show no or minimal harm to surface resources; this presumption is eliminated. The 2024 rule’s codification of specific special-area boundary maps into regulation is also removed, returning decisions about special-area boundaries and management restrictions to the BLM’s existing Integrated Activity Plan (IAP) planning process rather than locking them into regulatory text. New procedural steps the 2024 rule added — including requirements for statements of adverse effect before approving certain permits — are rescinded. The regulations revert to a framework in which oil and gas leasing is the primary statutory purpose, with surface-resource protection applied as a secondary, discretionary consideration consistent with that purpose. The rule does not itself approve or deny any specific project; site-specific decisions continue to go through the IAP and project-level review processes.
Oil and gas companies seeking leases, permits, or infrastructure approvals within the NPR-A face a regulatory environment that no longer carries a built-in presumption against new development in special areas. Alaska Native tribes, corporations, and North Slope communities — who participated in five formal government-to-government consultations during the rulemaking — are affected because the rule governs management of lands with subsistence, cultural, and wildlife values they rely on. Federal and state agencies, environmental organizations, and the general public who submitted roughly 257,000 comments during the process are subject to this outcome, with the BLM having identified 43 submissions as substantively responsive to the proposal.