Trump Opens More Than 1 Million Acres Of California Public Land To Drilling And Fracking, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That The Ground Around Sequoia And Carrizo Plain Was Still Only Ground

WASHINGTON. The Bureau of Land Management moved Monday to finalize a plan opening more than 1 million acres of Southern California public land to oil and gas drilling and fracking, resolving a long-standing concern within the administration that the ground surrounding Sequoia National Park, Carrizo Plain National Monument, and the Los Padres and Inyo national forests was still, for the moment, only ground.

The proposal, first released in January 2026 and advanced under the President's stated policy of energy dominance, would make available for leasing parcels next to protected coastlines, waterways, state and national parks, and the borders of the Sequoia, Los Padres, and Inyo national forests. Officials characterized the acreage as underused, a term that in federal land management refers to any ground not presently being drilled.

"Drill, baby, drill," the President has said on numerous occasions, a phrase the Interior Department confirmed now functions as the operative environmental review for the parcels in question. A senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the plan as a careful balancing of competing interests, chiefly the interest of extracting the oil and the interest of extracting it quickly.

The Bureau noted that the land near Carrizo Plain, one of the last undeveloped stretches of California grassland, had gone more than a century without a single well, an oversight the final decision was designed to correct. Air quality, groundwater, and the millions of visitors who reach the region's parks each year were listed in the environmental impact statement under the heading of factors considered, a heading that appears immediately before the section in which the leasing proceeds anyway.

California's governor, joined by his West Coast counterparts, has vowed to challenge the plan in court, objections the administration entered into the record and then walked past on its way to the auction. Officials expressed confidence that the parcels, once leased, would be difficult for any future court to un-drill.

At press time, the Bureau of Land Management had reclassified the remaining undrilled portions of California as a rounding error.