The federal government is putting another 3,388 acres of public mineral estate up for auction for oil and gas development in Montana and the Dakotas.

The Bureau of Land Management said it will offer 20 parcels in an online oil and gas lease sale scheduled for October 27.

The acreage has already moved through several stages of the federal review process. BLM completed scoping for the parcels in May and closed a public comment period on the acreage and related environmental analysis in July.

There is still one more opportunity to object. A 30-day public protest period opened Monday and runs through September 24, giving interested parties another chance to challenge individual parcels before the October sale.

Federal oil and gas leasing gives companies the right to pursue development of the acreage, but operators must still submit applications for permits to drill before beginning development. Those applications include proposed development plans and undergo another BLM review, environmental analysis, and public review process, so a lease sale is only one step in a longer federal approval path.

BLM said leases offered in the sale will also include stipulations intended to protect natural resources.

The October auction will be conducted online through Efficient Markets, while parcel information, maps, and protest instructions are available through BLM’s ePlanning system.

BLM manages roughly 245 million acres of public land, primarily across 12 western states and Alaska, and administers about 700 million acres of federal subsurface mineral estate nationwide.

The October offering is relatively small in acreage terms, with 20 parcels covering just under 3,400 acres. But it moves those acres one step closer to potential drilling at a time when federal oil and gas development remains a multi-stage process that continues well beyond the lease auction itself.

By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com