Drillers Pay a $12,850 Fee to Get a Federal Permit. A New Law Sends Every Dollar to the Fund That Pays for Permit Reviews
President Trump signed the License to Drill Act on Oct. 20, extending the Bureau of Land Management's permit-fee authority through 2037 and sending all of the fees to the BLM fund that pays for processing drilling permits. In our view, it is a small law with a big job: keeping American energy permits moving.
By Clara Hughes
ALTAS WORLD NEWS OPINION | By Clara Hughes, Chief Opinion Editor | October 21, 2026 | 6-min read Before a company can drill for oil or natural gas on federal land, it needs a permit, and to apply it pays the government a fee, currently $12,850 per application [1]. Most Americans have never heard of that fee. But the people who drill wells have, and so have the federal workers who review the applications, because the money pays for the reviews. On Tuesday, President Trump signed the License to Drill Act, which keeps that system running for another decade [2][3]. In our view, it is the kind of quiet, practical law that makes energy dominance real on the ground. Key Takeaways President Trump signed H.R. 7831, the License to Drill Act, on Oct. 20, 2026 [2]. The law extends the Interior Department's authority to collect a fee on each new Application for Permit to Drill from 2026 to 2037 [3]. For fiscal years 2027 through 2037, all of the fees collected go to the BLM Permit Processing Improvement Fund [3]. The fee is set by law, currently $12,850 per application, and adjusts each year for inflation [1]. In fiscal 2025, BLM