Sponsors (4)
The bill consolidates mineral leasing receipts into a dedicated Fund to improve predictability and transparency for recipients, but it replaces automatic transfers with centralized distribution authority—risking reduced or delayed payments and creating potential funding uncertainty for mineral programs unless governance and allocation rules are clearly defined.
State and local governments (and taxpayers): consolidating mineral leasing fees into a dedicated Fund pools revenues and can make distributions more predictable for state and local budgets.
Taxpayers and state governments: directing fees into a single Fund centralizes management and can improve transparency about how mineral leasing receipts are collected and used compared with multiple ad hoc transfers.
State and local governments: removing prior automatic statutory transfers could lead to reduced or delayed funding compared with the previous transfer mechanism.
State and local governments and taxpayers: centralizing receipts into a Fund may concentrate discretion with federal officials over distributions, reducing predictability and local control over funding.
Federal employees and energy-sector stakeholders: if the Fund's governance and permitted uses are not clearly defined, mineral-related programs (including BLM operations) and related infrastructure could face funding uncertainty.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Revises how fees under the Mineral Leasing Act are allocated by replacing several statutory paragraphs and directing receipts into a designated "Fund."
Introduced March 5, 2026 by Mike Kennedy · Last progress March 5, 2026
Amends the Mineral Leasing Act to change how fees collected under that law are handled, replacing multiple paragraphs of the statute and directing certain receipts into a referenced "Fund." It also gives the law a short title, the "License to Drill Act." The changes remove a prior multi-sentence transfer and allocation mechanism and replace it with a simpler direction to deposit receipts into "the Fund," which can change how revenue from leasing fees is distributed to agencies, states, or programs.