By Kendra Chamberlain, NM Political Report
Mar. 26, 2020

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management scrambled this week to make temporary changes to its lease sale rules in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, while some groups have called for the BLM to halt lease auctions all together until oil prices have rebounded.

The BLM opened a 10-day protest period March 23 for a lease sale of 45,446 acres of public land in New Mexico that’s scheduled for May of 2020. The protest period is the third and final public comment opportunity in the BLM’s lease sale process. While the department is able to accept public comments electronically during the scoping process and after the release of the draft environmental assessment (EA) for a lease sale, BLM typically requires protests to be either hand-delivered or sent by certified mail to the BLM state office in Santa Fe.

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