The Trump administration’s October deadline to replace the Biden administration’s offshore drilling program has arrived with only the first of three required proposals published.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum ordered the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) in November 2025 to replace the 2024-2029 offshore leasing program with a new one “by October 2026,” the department announced.
The draft released with the order, the first of the three proposals, laid out up to 34 lease sales in 21 of the 27 offshore planning areas, which together span roughly 1.27 billion acres, according to the department.
As of July, that draft was still the only proposal BOEM had published, according to the Congressional Research Service.
The second proposal carries a 90-day public comment period, and the final proposal must then sit for 60 days before the president and Congress before the program can be approved, according to BOEM’s overview of the process.
The national average for a gallon of regular gasoline was $4.41 on Oct. 1, and September’s monthly average of $4.33 set a record for the month, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA).
The Interior Department and the National Ocean Industries Association did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment. The American Petroleum Institute asked for more time and did not immediately provide a comment on the record.
“It takes years of planning, investment, and hard work before barrels reach the market,” Burgum said when the department released the draft.
Ocean conservation nonprofit Oceana is urging the Trump administration “to remove all currently considered areas from the draft five-year offshore drilling proposal,” Oceana Campaign Director Joseph Gordon said in a statement to the DCNF.
The group “will consider all options, including legal options,” he added.
The Biden administration’s 2024-2029 program scheduled three lease sales, all in the Gulf, which the Biden Interior Department said was “the smallest number of oil and gas lease sales in history.”
BOEM began planning for proposed lease sales off Southern and Central California in January, when it asked for public input on the areas, according to the Federal Register.
Leasing in a newly proposed Gulf planning area would stay at least 100 miles from Florida’s coastline, Offshore Magazine reported.
The new program’s lease sales would be in addition to those Congress mandated in last year’s reconciliation law, according to BOEM.
The Interior Department is merging BOEM and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement into a new agency called the Marine Minerals Administration, according to the Congressional Research Service.
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