The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), an agency under the United States Department of the Interior, has announced the elimination of several regulations considered obsolete to accelerate the development of geothermal energy. These regulatory changes are published in the Federal Register and will become effective in sixty days unless significant opposition is submitted within thirty days of publication.
Administrative simplification objective
The new measures involve repealing rules relating to competitive and non-competitive leases, royalty terms for leases, as well as procedures for amending operational plans and drilling permits. The Bureau of Land Management stated that these changes are intended to reduce uncertainty for leaseholders and improve the management of public resources. According to the agency’s official notice, three regulatory sections predating the Energy Policy Act of 2005 were considered obsolete, along with some texts from 2007 that are now outdated.
This decision follows the recent approval of a construction permit for a 30-megawatt geothermal power plant in Crescent Valley, Nevada. This initiative is part of the national strategy to increase domestic energy production.
Auctions and new opportunities
The Bureau of Land Management plans an upcoming geothermal lease auction on August 26 in California. The call for tenders will cover thirteen parcels totaling 23,000 acres across three counties. A second auction of comparable size is scheduled for September in Idaho, according to the agency.
According to the Bureau of Land Management, these regulatory revisions should not result in significant economic harm to the sector. The use of the “direct final rule” procedure, which allows for the adoption of a text without a public consultation period when deemed unnecessary, was justified by the primarily procedural nature of these changes.
Procedure and impact on the sector
The rules now eliminated mainly concerned lease applications filed before the entry into force of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Certain notification requirements, considered redundant, are also removed for geothermal operators. The agency stressed that the main objective is to make the process of allocating and managing leases more streamlined for sector stakeholders.
Other U.S. federal agencies have used the same regulatory procedure to simplify processes related to energy, such as the Department of Energy, which recently eliminated the requirement for a presidential permit to construct electricity transmission lines to Mexico or Canada.
“These regulations govern the use of public lands and federal mineral resources for leasing and developing geothermal resources under the Geothermal Steam Act,” stated the Bureau of Land Management in its release, published in the Federal Register.
