License to Drill Act

Core Policy Mechanism Top 1

Extend BLM Oil and Gas Permit Fee Collection to 2037

Amends Section 35(d) of the Mineral Leasing Act to extend the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) oil and gas permit application fee collection authority from 2026 to 2037 and to redirect all collected fees during fiscal years 2027–2037 entirely to the BLM Permit Processing Improvement Fund.

• Population Scope Low Directly affects only oil and gas companies filing new drilling permit applications on federal land — a narrow industry subset well under 10% of the U.S. population.
• Budgetary Magnitude Low Redirects existing per-application permit fees to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Permit Processing Improvement Fund; no new appropriation or dollar amount is authorized, and the fee revenue base is limited to a single permit class.
• Legal / Regulatory Depth Medium Changes how existing fee revenue must be allocated — a procedural reordering of mandatory fund transfers that binds agency conduct without altering the substantive rights or obligations of permit applicants.
• Degree of Discretion Granted Low The bill uses mandatory language ('shall transfer') and fixes both the destination and the fiscal-year range, leaving the Secretary of the Interior (DOI) no discretion over fee collection or allocation.
• Implementation & Enforcement Burden Low No new enforcement mechanisms, penalties, or compliance requirements are created; the change is purely an internal reallocation of already-collected fees.
• Temporal Commitment Low The fee collection authority and fund-transfer rules expire by their own terms at the end of fiscal year 2037, a hard sunset within 11 years that self-terminates without further congressional action.