WASHINGTON – North Dakota’s congressional delegation hailed its successful efforts this week to overturn a Biden-era plan for federal lands in the state.

Petroleum and mining organizations also welcomed Wednesday’s U.S. Senate vote to revoke the Bureau of Land Management Resource Management Plan (RMP), while environmental and landowner activists with the Dakota Resource Council objected to cancelling a plan that was developed over six years with input from farmers, ranchers and other property owners.

The Senate’s Oct. 8 vote sends the resolution to President Donald Trump for his signature. The House passed a companion resolution in September.

DRC cited its concern that Management of BLM lands in North Dakota will revert to a plan finalized in 1988, but U.S. Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-ND, called for a new RMP that recognizes the use of modern technologies in the energy industry and acknowledges America’s energy dominance as a national security issue.

Under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, the BLM must adopt resource management plans (RMPs) to govern how the agency will manage its acreage. In North Dakota, the BLM is the landlord of 58,500 surface acres and 4.1 million acres of mineral estate.

The Biden administration released its final RMP for North Dakota in August 2024 and adopted it in January without incorporating changes the State of North Dakota and its congressional delegation requested, Cramer said.

Cramer led the state’s delegation in asking the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to determine if the RMP qualified for repeal under the Congressional Review Act. Once the GAO determined the RMP qualified, Cramer and U.S. Sen. John Hoeven, R-ND, introduced a Joint Resolution of Disapproval in the Senate and Congresswoman Julie Fedorchak, R-ND, introduced its companion in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The RMP had prohibited coal leasing on more than 4 million acres, or nearly 99% of federal coal acreage. It blocked 213,000 acres, or 44%, of federally owned fluid mineral acreage, reducing state revenues and weakening American energy dominance, Cramer said.

“The thing that frustrates me the most is that the Bureau of Land Management, like so much of the federal bureaucracy, simply ignores the law because they don’t agree with it,” Cramer said in a news release. “They don’t have that option. Their resource plan requires the mandate to implement multiple use. Multiple use includes energy development. It includes grazing. It includes agriculture. It includes recreation. It includes development of resources. It’s multiple use. And that’s what frustrates us and that’s why we had to pass this resolution of disapproval to roll that thing out of there, make sure it never happens again.”

“Our energy producers operate under the highest environmental standards in the world. But the Biden administration’s North Dakota RMP ignores that record of responsible energy development, locking away taxpayer-owned energy reserves and jeopardizing our nation’s energy security,” Hoeven said in the release. “As manufacturing is brought back home, and new industries are coming online, our need for affordable, reliable energy is only growing. It makes no sense for the federal government to restrict access to the very resources needed to power this economic opportunity.”

Economic data provided by the state of North Dakota estimates the state would be deprived of $34 million annually in oil and gas royalties and tax revenue under the Biden RMP.

“North Dakotans saw the Biden administration’s plan for exactly what it was: a backdoor attempt to shut down fossil fuels in our state,” Fedorchak said, calling the Senate vote a victory for North Dakota and for American energy dominance.

DRC noted the RMP established a half-mile “no surface occupancy” buffer around the Missouri River, Lake Oahe and Lake Sakakawea to safeguard drinking water for thousands of Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara (MHA Nation) citizens and their communities in North Dakota, DRC stated. The BLM will be prohibited from ever adding that buffer again unless Congress legislates it, the organization said.

“Now, the fossil fuel industry has carte blanche to pollute our water and run roughshod over our homelands, hunting grounds, burial grounds and other sacred and culturally important places,” DRC member Lisa Finley-DeVille of Mandaree, a citizen of MHA Nation, said in a statement issued after the Senate vote. “The federal government has a trust responsibility to tribes. That means respecting sovereignty, honoring treaties, and protecting our resources. Today, Sens. Hoeven and Cramer betrayed that trust and thumbed their noses at the years of work invested by the MHA and other nations to protect the health of our people, communities and cultures.”

“Sens. Hoeven and Cramer’s actions today run counter to North Dakota’s long tradition of local control and letting the market drive our future,” said DRC Board Chair Curt Stofferahn of Fargo. “By intervening to prop up an aging coal industry, they’re ignoring the work and priorities of North Dakotans who helped shape the state’s resource management plan.”

The North Dakota Petroleum Council supported the resolution, saying the RMP ignores modern drilling technologies and imposes blanket closures that are inconsistent with federal law and harmful to the state’s economy.

“This action is a major victory for common sense and our rural communities,” said Alison Ritter, executive director of the Western Dakota Energy Association in a release. “Keeping North Dakota’s towns and schools thriving starts with allowing for the smart, responsible development of our oil and gas resources — the backbone of good-paying jobs, strong local economies and reliable energy for our nation.”

The Lignite Energy Council, American Petroleum Institute, American Exploration and Production Council, National Mining Council, Western Energy Alliance and Independent Petroleum Association of America also issued statements in support of overturning the RMP.