Title 43—Public Lands: Interior--Volume 1
PART 3000—MINERALS MANAGEMENT: GENERAL
§ 3000.5   Definitions.
As used in 43 CFR parts 3000 and 3100, the term:
Acquired lands means lands which the United States obtained by deed through purchase or gift, or through condemnation proceedings, including lands previously disposed of under the public land laws including the mining laws.
Acreage for which expressions of interest have been submitted means acreage that is identified in an expression of interest received by the BLM, that has not been proposed for leasing in any pending sale or other expression of interest pending BLM disposition, and for which the BLM may lawfully issue an oil and gas lease.
Acres offered for lease means all acres that the BLM has offered for oil and gas lease, regardless of whether those acres are acreage for which expressions of interest have been submitted.
Act or MLA means the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920, as amended and supplemented (30 U.S.C. 181 et seq. ).
Anniversary date means the same day and month in succeeding years as that on which the lease became effective.
Authorized officer means any BLM employee authorized to perform the duties described in parts 3000 and 3100.
BLM or Bureau means the Bureau of Land Management.
Director means the Director of the Bureau of Land Management.
Gas means any fluid, either combustible or noncombustible, which is produced in a natural state from the earth and which maintains a gaseous or rarefied state at ordinary temperatures and pressure conditions.
Interest means ownership in a lease, or prospective lease, of all or a portion of the record title, working interest, operating rights, overriding royalty, payments out of production, carried interests, net profit share or similar instrument for participation in the benefit derived from a lease. An interest may be created by direct or indirect ownership, including options. Interest does not mean stock ownership, stockholding or stock control in an application, offer, competitive bid or lease, except for purposes of acreage limitations in 43 CFR 3101.20 and qualifications of lessees in 43 CFR subpart 3102.
Oil means all nongaseous hydrocarbon substances other than those substances leasable as coal, oil shale or gilsonite (including all vein-type solid hydrocarbons).
ONRR means the Office of Natural Resources Revenue.
Party in interest means a party who is or will be vested with any interest under the lease as defined in this section. No one is a sole party in interest with respect to an application, offer, competitive bid or lease in which any other party has an interest.
Person means any individual, firm, corporation, association, partnership, consortium, or joint venture.
Proper BLM office means the Bureau of Land Management state office having jurisdiction over the lands subject to the regulations in parts 3000 and 3100.
(See 43 CFR 1821.10 for office location and area of jurisdiction of Bureau of Land Management offices.)
Properly filed means a document or form submitted to the proper BLM office with all necessary information and payments, as provided in 43 CFR subpart 1822.
Public domain lands means lands, including mineral estates, which never left the ownership of the United States, lands which were obtained by the United States in exchange for public domain lands, lands which have reverted to the ownership of the United States through the operation of the public land laws and other lands specifically identified by the Congress as part of the public domain.
Secretary means the Secretary of the Interior.
Surface managing agency means any Federal agency, other than the BLM, having management responsibility for the surface resources that overlay federally owned minerals.
§ 3000.10   Nondiscrimination.
Any person acquiring a lease under this chapter must comply fully with the equal opportunity provisions of Executive Order 11246 dated September 24, 1965, as amended, and the rules, regulations and relevant orders of the Secretary of Labor (41 CFR part 60 and 43 CFR part 17).
§ 3000.20   False statements.
As provided in 18 U.S.C. 1001, it is a crime punishable by imprisonment or a fine, or both, for any person knowingly and willfully to submit or cause to be submitted to any agency of the United States any false or fraudulent statement(s) as to any matter within the agency's jurisdiction.
§ 3000.30   Unlawful interests.
No member of, or delegate to, Congress, or Resident Commissioner, and no employee of the Department of the Interior, except as provided in 43 CFR part 20, is allowed or entitled to acquire or hold any Federal lease, or interest therein. (Officer, agent or employee of the Department—see 43 CFR part 20; Member of Congress—see R.S. 3741; 41 U.S.C. 22; 18 U.S.C. 431-433.)
§ 3000.40   Appeals.
Except as provided in 43 CFR 3000.120, 3101.53(b), 3103.1, 3165.4, and 3427.2, any party adversely affected by a decision of the authorized officer made pursuant to the provisions of 43 CFR parts 3000 or 3100 has a right of appeal pursuant to 43 CFR part 4.
§ 3000.41   Severability.
If a court holds any section or its paragraphs of the regulations in parts 3000 through 3180 or their applicability to any person or circumstance invalid, the remainder of these rules and their applicability to other persons or circumstances will not be affected.
§ 3000.50   Limitations on time to institute suit to challenge a decision of the Secretary.
No action challenging a decision of the Secretary involving any oil or gas lease (including decisions on offers or applications to lease) can be maintained unless such action is commenced or taken within 90 days after the final decision of the Secretary relating to such matter.
§ 3000.60   Filing of documents.
All necessary documents must be filed in the proper BLM office. Documents may be submitted to the BLM using hard-copy delivery services, in-person delivery, or by electronic filing. When using hard-copy delivery services or in-person delivery, the document will be considered filed only when received during regular business hours in the proper BLM office. See 43 CFR part 1820, subpart 1822.
§ 3000.70   Multiple development.
The granting of a permit or lease for the prospecting, development or production of deposits of any one mineral does not preclude the issuance of other permits or leases for the same lands for deposits of other minerals with suitable stipulations for simultaneous operation, nor the allowance of applicable entries, locations or selections of leased lands with a reservation of the mineral deposits to the United States.
§ 3000.80   Management of Federal minerals from reserved mineral estates.
Where nonmineral public land disposal statutes provide that in conveyances of title all or certain minerals are reserved to the United States together with the right to prospect for, mine and remove the minerals under applicable law and regulations as the Secretary may prescribe, the lease or sale, and administration and management of the use of such minerals will be accomplished under the regulations of 43 CFR parts 3000 and 3100. Such mineral estates include, but are not limited to, those that have been or will be reserved under the authorities of the Small Tract Act of June 1, 1938, as amended (43 U.S.C. 682(b)) and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (43 U.S.C. 1701 et seq. ).
§ 3000.90   Enforcement actions under the United States Code.
The United States Department of Justice is the agency responsible for the enforcement actions described in 30 U.S.C. 195, which makes it unlawful for any person to organize or participate in any scheme, arrangement, plan, or agreement to circumvent or defeat the provisions of the MLA or its implementing regulations; or to seek to obtain or to obtain any money or property by means of false statements of material facts or by failing to state materials facts concerning the:
(a) Value of any lease or portion thereof issued or to be issued under the MLA;
(b) Availability of any land for leasing under the MLA;
(c) Ability of any person to obtain leases under the MLA; or
(d) Provisions of the MLA and its implementing regulations.
§ 3000.100   Fees in general.
(a) Setting fees. Fees may be statutorily set fees, relatively nominal filing fees, or processing fees intended to reimburse the BLM for its reasonable processing costs. For processing fees, the BLM takes into account the factors in section 304(b) of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA) (43 U.S.C. 1734(b)) before deciding a fee. The BLM considers the factors for each type of document when the processing fee is a fixed fee and for each individual document when the fee is decided on a case-by-case basis, as explained in § 3000. 110.
(b) Conditions for filing. The BLM will not accept a document that the applicant submits without the proper filing or processing fee amounts except for documents where the BLM sets the fee on a case-by-case basis. Fees are not refundable except as provided for case-by-case fees in § 3000. 110. The BLM will keep the fixed filing or processing fee as a service charge even if the BLM does not approve the application or the applicant withdraws it completely or partially.
(c) Periodic adjustment. The BLM will periodically adjust fees established in this subchapter according to changes in the Implicit Price Deflator for Gross Domestic Product, which is published quarterly by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Because the fee recalculations are simply based on a mathematical formula, the BLM will change the fees in final rules without opportunity for notice and comment.
(d) Timing of fee applicability. (1) For a document that the BLM received before June 22, 2024, the BLM will not charge a fixed fee or a case-by-case fee under this subchapter for processing that document, except for fees applicable under then-existing regulations.
(2) For a document that the BLM receives on or after June 22, 2024, the applicant must include the required fixed fees with the documents filed, as provided in § 3000.120(a) of this chapter, and the applicant is subject to case-by-case processing fees as provided in § 3000.110 and under other provisions of this chapter.
§ 3000.110   Processing fees on a case-by-case basis.
(a) Fees in this subchapter are designated either as case-by-case fees or as fixed fees. The fixed fees are established in this subchapter for specified types of documents. However, if the BLM decides at any time that a particular document designated for a fixed fee will have a unique processing cost, such as the preparation of an Environmental Impact Statement, the BLM may set the fee under the case-by-case procedures in this section.
(b) For case-by-case fees, the BLM measures the ongoing processing cost for each individual document and considers the factors in section 304(b) of FLPMA on a case-by-case basis according to the following procedures:
(1) The applicant may request the BLM's approval to do all or part of any study or other activity according to standards the BLM specifies, thereby reducing the BLM's costs for processing the document, in accordance with all other applicable laws and regulations.
(2) Before performing any case processing, the BLM will give the applicant a written estimate of the proposed fee for reasonable processing costs after the BLM considers the FLPMA section 304(b) factors.
(3) The applicant may comment on the proposed fee.
(4) The BLM will then give the applicant the final estimate of the processing fee amount after considering the applicant's comments and any BLM-approved work that the applicant will do.
(i) If the BLM encounters higher or lower processing costs than anticipated, the BLM will re-estimate the reasonable processing costs following the procedure in paragraphs (b)(1) through (4) of this section, but the BLM will not stop ongoing processing unless the applicant does not pay in accordance with paragraph (b)(5) of this section.
(ii) If the fee the applicant would pay under this paragraph (b)(4) is less than the BLM's actual costs as a result of consideration of the FLPMA section 304(b) factors, and the BLM is not able to process the document promptly because of the unavailability of funding or other resources, the applicant will have the option to pay the BLM's actual costs to process the document.
(iii) Once processing is complete, the BLM will refund to the applicant any money that the BLM did not spend on processing costs.
(5)(i) The BLM will periodically estimate what its reasonable processing costs will be for a specific period and will bill the applicant for that period. Payment is due to the BLM 30 days after the applicant receives its bill. The BLM will stop processing the document if the applicant does not pay the bill by the date payment is due.
(ii) If a periodic payment turns out to be more or less than the BLM's reasonable processing costs for the period, the BLM will adjust the next billing accordingly or make a refund. Do not deduct any amount from a payment without the BLM's prior written approval.
(6) The applicant must pay the entire fee before the BLM will issue the final document.
(7) The applicant may appeal the BLM's estimated processing costs in accordance with the regulations in 43 CFR part 4, subpart E. The applicant may also appeal any determination the BLM makes under paragraph (a) of this section that a document designated for a fixed fee will be processed as a case-by-case fee. The BLM will not process the document further until the appeal is resolved, in accordance with paragraph (b)(5)(i) of this section, unless the applicant pays the fee under protest while the appeal is pending. If the appeal results in a decision changing the proposed fee, the BLM will adjust the fee in accordance with paragraph (b)(5)(ii) of this section.
§ 3000.120   Fee schedule for fixed fees.
(a) The table in this section lists the services that require payment of fixed fees to the BLM. The fixed fee amounts are posted on the BLM website ( https://www.blm.gov ) and published in a Federal Register notice. These fees are nonrefundable and must be included with documents filed under this chapter. Fees will be adjusted annually according to the change in the Implicit Price Deflator for Gross Domestic Product since the previous adjustment and will subsequently be posted on the BLM website ( https://www.blm.gov ) and announced annually in the Federal Register before October 1 each year. Revised fees are effective each year on October 1.
Table 1 to Paragraph ( a )—Processing and Filing Fee Table
* To record a mining claim or site location, this processing fee along with the initial maintenance fee and the one-time location fee required by statute 43 CFR part 3833 must be paid.
(b) The amount of a fixed fee is not subject to appeal to the Interior Board of Land Appeals pursuant to 43 CFR part 4, subpart E.