BLM is cutting 40% of its staff. The office that leases the oil and gas loses 5%.

The Bureau of Land Management runs the largest landlord operation in the country — about 245 million surface acres and 700 million acres of subsurface mineral estate, leased out for grazing, timber, recreation, and energy.▸ Activity on that land generated $245.4 billion in economic output and supported roughly 884,000 jobs in fiscal year 2024, by the bureau's own accounting. Its FY2027 budget request, submitted to Congress this spring, cuts the bureau's own workforce nearly in half — but not evenly. The office that actually leases, permits, and inspects the oil and gas wells is one of the only parts of BLM the cuts mostly pass over.

BLM itself doesn't collect royalty checks — that job belongs to a separate Interior bureau, the Office of Natural Resources Revenue (ONRR).▸ But ONRR's collections exist only because BLM leased the acreage, approved the permit, and inspected the well. In fiscal year 2025, onshore federal oil and gas leases generated $7.517 billion — $7.191 billion in royalties, $156.5 million in lease bonuses, and $169.1 million in rents and other revenue, according to the Congressional Research Service's compilation of ONRR data. Under the Mineral Leasing Act's disbursement formula, $3.510 billion went to the states and counties where the leases sit, $2.787 billion funded the Bureau of Reclamation's water projects across the West, $779 million went to the Treasury's General Fund, and $247 million went to other federal funds.

BLM's FY2027 Budget Justification — the bureau's own request to Congress, not an outside estimate — lays out where its staff is headed.▸ Bureau-wide total FTE (full-time equivalent staff, counting every funding source) falls from 9,745 in FY2025 to 7,984 under the FY2026 enacted appropriation, then to 5,836 under the FY2027 request: a drop of 3,909 positions, -40.1%, in two budget cycles. The FY2027 figure is a request, not yet enacted law — Congress has not passed FY2027 appropriations as of this writing, so the final number could move. But the direction the administration is asking for is unambiguous.

Almost every program absorbs cuts of that scale: the same document zeroes out Renewable Energy Management entirely (-100 FTE), and cuts Rangeland Management, Wildlife Habitat and Aquatic Resources, Cultural Resources, and National Conservation Lands each by double-digit percentages or more. One activity is the exception.

Energy and Minerals Management — the activity code covering oil and gas leasing, permitting, coal, and other mineral programs — goes from 946 FTE in FY2025 to 909 in FY2026 to 897 in the FY2027 request: a loss of 49 positions, -5.2%, across the identical two-year span the rest of the bureau is losing 40.1%.▸ The budget justification itself frames this as deliberate: the 2027 request is built around "Administration priorities related to Energy Dominance," and directs the bureau to keep "maximizing the development of the Federal surface and subsurface estate" even as it shrinks nearly every function around it.

Bureau-wide and Energy and Minerals Management FTE figures come from the same BLM budget document and are directly comparable; FY2027 figures are the administration's request, not enacted appropriations, as Congress had not passed FY2027 spending bills as of this writing. Revenue and disbursement figures cover onshore federal oil and gas leases only — they exclude offshore (Gulf of America) production, coal, and other minerals, which are reported separately.