BLM Opens More Federal Land to Permit-Free Geothermal

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes · Last updated: 1 September 2026

A Bureau of Land Management instruction memorandum, IM-2026-024, published Monday and effective immediately that day, reclassifies certain low-impact geothermal exploration as “casual use” of public land and removes the prior requirement for a permit or advance notification of BLM officials. The instruction covers more than 240 million acres of federal land overseen by the bureau, with most of that acreage located in the West. It says activities judged to have minimal or negligible effects on public lands and resources qualify for casual-use treatment; the memo lists seismic and other geophysical surveys and surface and groundwater activities among those examples.

What the BLM memorandum changes for geothermal fieldwork

The Bureau of Land Management issued instruction memorandum IM-2026-024 and put it into effect immediately on the Monday it was published. The instruction reclassifies a subset of geothermal exploration as 'casual use' of public land. Under that label, the document removes the need for a permit and for advance notification to BLM officials for the activities it identifies.

The memo itself frames 'casual' activities as those judged to create minimal or negligible effects on public lands and resources. Through this administrative change, the BLM has reduced which exploration activities will require formal permits and the accompanying paperwork, at least for the items the instruction explicitly lists.

How much land and which activities are in scope

IM-2026-024 applies across the bureau’s portfolio, which the memo quantifies as more than 240 million acres of federal land, the bulk of it in western states. That figure is the scale the BLM gives for the area over which the instruction takes effect.

The instruction names seismic surveys and other geophysical work among the activities it treats as casual use. The text also points to surface and groundwater activities in the same list; the memorandum frames these examples as low-impact operations that usually have little to no effect on public lands and resources.

Immediate practical consequences and administrative limits

Practically, teams conducting the specific exploration work the memo lists will no longer need to obtain a BLM permit or provide advance notice for those actions defined as casual use. The change applies from the Monday the memorandum took effect and across the lands the bureau manages.

The instruction is procedural: it changes how the BLM categorizes particular field activities. It does not, in the text provided, declare broader policy on development, nor does it supply an exhaustive checklist of permitted versus non‑permitted work beyond the examples the memorandum supplies.

Possible near-term outcomes

The bottom line

The Bureau of Land Management’s instruction memorandum IM-2026-024 makes an administrative classification that takes effect immediately for the activities it names: certain low-impact geothermal exploration will be treated as 'casual use' and so will not require permits or advance notification. The change applies across the BLM’s stated portfolio of more than 240 million acres, mostly in western states. The memo supplies examples—seismic and other geophysical surveys and surface and groundwater activities—but the published extract leaves open how field offices will interpret marginal cases. Readers should watch for BLM guidance and regional implementation notes to see how the instruction is applied in practice.

What to watch

• Watch for any BLM follow-up guidance that defines precisely which surface and groundwater activities fall within the memo’s casual-use examples; no date has been set.
• Watch for field-office implementation notes from BLM regional offices describing how they will apply IM-2026-024 across the more than 240 million acres it covers; no date has been set.