The Converse County Oil and Gas Project was celebrated by many in Wyoming back in 2020, when it appeared the Bureau of Land Management was done with its environmental assessment and ready to allow 5,000 new oil and natural gas wells within the 1.5 million-acre project area.
This week, the Petroleum Association of Wyoming released a statement pointing out how after nearly a decade of study, the project is still hung up in court.
“Clearly, change is needed,” the group said in response to news the U.S. Department of the Interior is overhauling its permitting system to allow more drilling on public land.
“The new permitting procedures will take a multi-year process down to just 28 days at most,” according to a Wednesday statement from the Department of the Interior, which oversees the BLM.
“Projects analyzed in an environmental assessment, normally taking up to one year, will now be reviewed within approximately 14 days,” the new guideline states.
Full environmental impact statements, like the one done for proposed drilling in Converse County, “will be reviewed in roughly 28 days.”
Response to the revised approach to environmental reviews for oil and gas drilling has been divided.
“We appreciate the administration’s efforts to evaluate the permitting process and urge Congress to pass comprehensive permitting reform,” is how PAW greeted the news, while conservation groups sounded an alarm about ignoring the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA).
“This directive, based on an emergency that doesn’t exist, silences the public and guts NEPA’s core purpose — informed decision making,” said Tracy Stone-Manning, president of The Wilderness Society.
The DOI’s recent directive follows other recent announcements from the BLM about lifting regulatory barriers for 2,147 leases covering about 2.25 million acres in Wyoming.
The first test case for how the new DOI and BLM policies will play out on the ground in Wyoming may come through the 37 oil and gas parcels, totaling 45,178 acres, now up for public comment through the BLM.
The comment period ends May 15, and the parcel leases are slated for sale in September.
“The BLM will use input from the public to help complete its review of each parcel,” according to a recent statement from the agency. “The BLM reviews applications for permits to drill, posts them for public review, conducts an environmental analysis and coordinates with state partners and stakeholders.”
That will all need to happen in under 28 days, according to the new rules.
Chill Setting In?
Beyond industry advocates and environmental groups, business journalists and analysts watching the current acceleration in the permitting process are uncertain where the oil and gas markets are headed if there’s a sudden increase in production.
“With crude oil global supply at or near par to demand, some oil producers fear that the market will become oversupplied,” reported Dennis Kissler on Thursday in a column for Hart Energy, an oil and gas industry publication.
The headline for the piece was, “Producers Might Want to Chill, Baby, Chill,” as it repeated a play on words that appeared in the industry press at the start of 2025.
Kissler wondered if tariffs and a weakening stock market could push demand for oil lower, while the Trump administration’s “Drill, Baby, Drill” policies push supply higher.
Commodity traders pegged the price of crude oil at $63.17 a barrel as markets closed Friday.
Also Friday, Amplify Energy Corp. and Juniper Capital Advisors announced they are terminating a plan to drill for oil in Wyoming “in light of the extraordinary volatility in the market.”
In January, the two companies reported in a joint statement they were working together to develop, “substantial oil-weighted producing assets and significant leasehold interests in the DJ and Powder River Basins.”
“Amplify Energy Corp. is an independent oil and natural gas company engaged in the acquisition, development, exploitation and production of oil and natural gas properties,” the statement says, and for now, it’s pushing pause on work in Wyoming.
Industry Survey
This month, the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicted the price of oil will continue to dip by about 1.5% over the next year.
In its April 11 energy survey, the Tenth Federal Reserve District — which includes Wyoming — found the oil producing firms surveyed reported that oil prices needed to be on average $65 per barrel for drilling to be profitable, and $85 per barrel for a substantial increase in drilling to occur.
With natural gas prices, they needed to be $3.80 per million Btu for drilling to be profitable on average, and $5.10 per million Btu for drilling to increase substantially.
On Friday, the closing price of natural gas was $2.94 per million Btu.
The federal reserve survey included selected quotes from contacts in the oil and gas industry. Some tried to decipher the current trends in oil and gas prices, observing, “Softening of the economy in near term leads to lower energy prices,” and “High demand and inflation pushing up development costs.”
David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.
