Conservation groups have vowed to sue if the Bureau of Land Management moves forward with oil and gas lease sales on hundreds of thousands of acres in Southern and Central California. (Sergey Novikov)
By Suzzane Potter
Aug 21, 2026
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Aug. 24, is the last day for the public to comment on a plan by the Bureau of Land Management to sell 50 oil and gas parcels totaling nearly 36,000 acres across Kern, Kings, Fresno and San Luis Obispo counties.
For the oil and gas lease sale:
https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/BLM-2025-0037-0001
People can also weigh in on a separate proposal critics said would limit public participation, weaken environmental protections and make it easier to expand oil and gas development.
Heidi Harmon, former mayor of San Luis Obispo and a member of the Leadership Council of the nonprofit California Elected Officials to Protect America, said drilling and fracking would destroy the natural spaces forever.
“The last thing we need as the climate crisis spirals out of control are more fossil fuels in our system,” Harmon contended. “Now we’re looking at probably the highest heat year in history. The climate crisis is here. It’s happening.”
The Trump administration has focused on expanding the domestic oil and gas industry, arguing it provides good jobs and reduces the need to import oil from abroad.
Harmon noted the proposals could potentially allow drilling in Pinnacles National Park, Mount Diablo State Park, Henry W. Coe State Park and Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve.
Felipe De Jesus Perez, a city council member and former mayor of Firebaugh, a farmworker community in the Central Valley and another member of the group, said he recalled breathing in the fumes from nearby rigs when working the fields in his youth.
“Oil and gas development on public lands will disproportionately impact the front line communities, making cancer risks rise even more,” Perez asserted. “Too many people have lost their lives prematurely because they cannot breathe clean air.”
A 2021 study from Harvard University found fossil fuel emissions accounted for 18% of total global deaths in 2018, which is just under one in five people.
Additional pending lease sales would affect more than 400,000 acres in Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Tulare and Ventura counties.
