The Claim

Re-opened hundreds of millions of acres to oil, gas, and coal production.

The Claim, Unpacked

What is literally being asserted?

That the Trump administration “re-opened” a quantity of land measured in “hundreds of millions of acres” for oil, gas, and coal production. The prefix “re-opened” implies these lands were previously available, were then closed, and have now been restored to their prior status.

What is being implied but not asserted?

That energy production on these lands was actively halted by the prior administration and that restoring access will meaningfully increase American energy output. That the acreage figure represents land where drilling, mining, or production will actually occur. That market demand exists to develop these areas.

What is conspicuously absent?

Any distinction between administrative availability and actual production. The vast majority of the “hundreds of millions of acres” figure comes from offshore waters where no active drilling existed and where the legal authority to reverse the withdrawal remains contested in federal court. No mention that an ANWR lease sale in January 2025 drew zero bids, or that coal lease auctions in Utah and Montana failed due to lack of industry interest. No mention that oil production on federal lands reached record highs under Biden despite reduced leasing, because production depends on existing leases, not new ones. No acknowledgment that items 325, 327, and 328 on this same list describe overlapping components of the same policy actions.

Padding Analysis: Overlapping Energy Claims

Item 326 substantially overlaps with three adjacent items on the list. Item 325 claims credit for “reversing Biden-era drilling restrictions” and approving drilling permits on federal land — the onshore component of the same policy. Item 327 specifically claims the 13.1 million acres opened for coal leasing — a subset of the acreage counted in this item. Item 328 claims credit for “record domestic oil and natural gas production following expanded leasing and permitting” — the purported outcome of the actions described here. These four items describe different facets of a single policy agenda: reversing Biden-era land management decisions, opening more federal land to energy leasing, and claiming credit for production levels. The acreage figures overlap, and the underlying executive orders and secretarial orders are the same across all four claims.

Evidence Assessment

Established Facts

The Trump administration did take executive and regulatory actions affecting hundreds of millions of acres of federal land and waters. On January 20, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14148, which revoked President Biden’s January 6, 2025 memoranda withdrawing approximately 625 million acres of Outer Continental Shelf from oil and gas leasing. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum subsequently signed Secretary’s Order 3420 directing the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to terminate the Biden 2024-2029 National OCS Leasing Program and replace it with the 11th National OCS Leasing Program covering approximately 1.27 billion acres across 21 of 27 planning areas. On the onshore side, BLM reopened 82% of the 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPR-A) to oil and gas leasing, and the administration opened the 1.56-million-acre ANWR Coastal Plain to leasing. The DOI also opened 13.1 million acres for coal leasing under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. By acreage alone, the “hundreds of millions” characterization is numerically defensible. ¹

Biden’s January 2025 offshore withdrawal covered areas with minimal active production. The 625 million acres Biden withdrew included the entire Atlantic Coast, Eastern Gulf of Mexico, Pacific OCS, and portions of Alaska’s Northern Bering Sea. There was no active oil and gas exploration or development along the Atlantic or in the Northern Bering Sea. Offshore California had approximately 30 decades-old existing leases, and the Eastern Gulf had about a dozen. Nearly all offshore production was concentrated in the Western and Central Gulf of Mexico, which was not subject to the withdrawal. Industry had yet to produce on more than 80% of the 12 million acres already under lease in actively producing areas. ²

The legal authority to reverse an OCSLA Section 12(a) withdrawal remains contested. In Trump’s first term, U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason ruled in League of Conservation Voters v. Trump that Section 12(a) of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act operates as a “one-way ratchet” — granting presidents authority to withdraw areas from leasing but not to revoke prior withdrawals. The case was dismissed as moot before appellate review, leaving the issue unresolved at the circuit level. Environmental groups have filed new lawsuits challenging Trump’s revocation of Biden’s withdrawal on the same grounds, and the case is pending before the same judge. The OBBBA included legislative provisions that may partially moot the legal question for some areas, but the broader constitutional question remains open. ³

Oil production on federal lands reached record highs under Biden despite significantly reduced leasing. EIA data shows onshore federal lands crude oil production reached 1.7 million barrels per day in 2024, a record high — six times the 2008 level. This occurred despite the Biden administration leasing only 75,000 to 249,000 acres per year (FY 2021-2023), compared to 1.1 to 2.2 million acres per year under the first Trump administration. The record production was driven primarily by drilling on existing leases in New Mexico’s Permian Basin, not by new lease issuances. Federal lands and waters accounted for approximately 26% of domestic oil production and 14% of natural gas production in 2024. ⁴

Industry interest in many newly opened areas has been minimal. The ANWR Coastal Plain lease sale in January 2025 received zero bids, a result attributed to the area’s distance from infrastructure, high Arctic development costs, lack of updated resource data, and litigation risk. In the coal sector, a Utah tract received zero bids, a Montana Spring Creek Mine sale received one bid rejected as below fair market value (less than a penny per ton for 167 million tons), and the Wyoming West Antelope III sale was postponed indefinitely. The successful Alabama sale involved metallurgical coal for steelmaking, a distinct market from the declining thermal coal sector. ⁵

The 13.1 million acres opened for coal leasing are concentrated in a few Western states. BLM data shows the breakdown: Montana (6.7 million acres), North Dakota (3.795 million), Wyoming (2.2 million), Colorado (1.76 million), New Mexico (400,000), and Utah (48,000). Approximately 11 million of these 13.1 million acres are split-estate lands where the surface is private, state, or local — meaning the federal government controls only the subsurface mineral rights, not the surface. The OBBBA required a minimum of 4 million acres; the administration tripled that requirement. ⁶

Strong Inferences

The “hundreds of millions of acres” figure is dominated by offshore waters where production is unlikely in the near or medium term. The proposed 11th National OCS Leasing Program covers 1.27 billion acres, but the draft program excludes the entire Atlantic region due to opposition from Atlantic-state governors. Pacific lease sales face strong state opposition. Alaska offshore areas face extreme logistical and economic barriers. The areas with genuine near-term production potential remain concentrated in the Gulf of Mexico, where drilling was never restricted. Opening acreage to leasing is an administrative step many stages removed from actual production. ⁷

The gap between “opening” land and generating production is measured in years to decades. Even in areas with industry interest, the timeline from leasing to first production spans approximately 5-10 years for offshore development and 3-7 years for onshore. EIA projects that even if ANWR leasing proceeds, production would not begin until 2031 at the earliest. For coal, existing operators already hold sufficient leases for at least a decade of operations at current production levels. The claim conflates administrative availability with productive activity. ⁸

What the Evidence Shows

The Trump administration did take sweeping administrative actions affecting hundreds of millions of acres. Executive Order 14148 revoked Biden’s offshore withdrawal covering 625 million acres. The 11th National OCS Leasing Program proposes sales across 1.27 billion acres. The NPR-A was reopened to 82% of its 23 million acres. The OBBBA coal leasing provisions covered 13.1 million acres. By the pure acreage metric, the claim is numerically accurate.

But acreage opened to leasing is a fundamentally different thing from acreage opened to production. The bulk of the figure consists of offshore waters where there is no current exploration activity, no near-term industry interest, and significant legal uncertainty about whether the executive order that “reopened” them will survive judicial review. The ANWR Coastal Plain, an emblematic component of the claim, drew exactly zero bids at its first lease sale. Western coal auctions generated mostly silence from an industry that already holds more leases than it can use.

The underlying economic reality is that U.S. oil production reached record highs under Biden despite reduced federal leasing, because production is driven by existing leases, infrastructure, and global commodity prices — not by the volume of new acreage nominally available. The Permian Basin drives federal lands production growth regardless of which administration is managing leasing policy. Opening vast new acreage to leasing when existing leased acreage is underutilized is a policy signal, not a production driver.

This item also demonstrates significant padding. Items 325, 326, 327, and 328 describe overlapping aspects of the same policy actions: reversing Biden restrictions (325), reopening acreage (326), coal leasing specifically (327), and the production outcome (328). The acreage counted in 327 is a subset of the acreage counted here. The permits described in 325 are the mechanism by which some of this acreage becomes productive. Together they transform a single policy direction into four separate “wins.”

The Bottom Line

The administration did take administrative steps affecting hundreds of millions of acres. The number is real. But it describes an aspiration, not an accomplishment in any productive sense. Most of the acreage was never producing energy, has no near-term prospect of producing energy, and faces both legal challenges and market indifference. The claim counts acres the way a real estate listing counts square footage on an undeveloped parcel — technically accurate, but designed to create an impression of abundance that the underlying reality does not support. The genuine policy change here is the reversal of Biden-era conservation decisions, a real shift in federal land management philosophy. But the “hundreds of millions of acres” framing conflates paper availability with energy production in a way that overstates the practical impact by orders of magnitude.

Footnotes

1. BLM, “Progress on Public Lands: BLM 2025 Trump Administration Accomplishments,” January 6, 2026. DOI, “Interior Launches Expansive 11th National Offshore Leasing Program,” November 20, 2025. DOI, “Interior Unleashes American Coal Power,” September 29, 2025. ↩

2. CNN, “Biden permanently bans offshore drilling in 625 million acres of ocean,” January 6, 2025. DOI, “President Biden Takes Action to Protect America’s Coastlines,” January 6, 2025. ↩

3. Holland & Knight, “Understanding President Joe Biden’s Offshore Drilling Restrictions,” January 2025. Vinson & Elkins, “War on the Offshore — President Trump Restores Areas Withdrawn by Biden,” 2025. League of Conservation Voters v. Trump, No. 3:17-cv-00101-SLG (D. Alaska 2019). ↩

4. EIA, “Onshore crude oil production on federal lands has increased in recent years,” July 2025. API, “Drilling Down On The Federal Leasing Facts.” ↩

5. Alaska Beacon, “Oil and gas lease sale in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge draws no bids,” January 8, 2025. NOTUS, “Trump Has Opened Public Land to Coal Mining. Not Many Are Interested.” ↩

6. BLM, “Lands Made Available for Coal Leasing” (OBBBA implementation page). Federal Register, “Implementing Section 50203 of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” October 2, 2025. ↩

7. DOI, “Interior Launches Expansive 11th National Offshore Leasing Program,” November 20, 2025. E&E News, “Interior proposes massive offshore leasing expansion.” ↩

8. EIA, “Analysis of Projected Crude Oil Production in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.” CRS, IF12006, “Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Status of Oil and Gas Program.” ↩