Geothermal Leasing on Federal Lands

The Bureau Of Land Management (BLM) is the agency  responsible for managing geothermal leases on all federal lands. Not all federal lands are open to geothermal leasing. For example, geothermal exploration cannot occur in Wilderness Areas, wilderness study areas (WSA's), or areas of critical environmental concern (ACEC's). Once a geothermal lease has been submitted, the case is handled by the local BLM field office in which the lease occurs. A fairly lengthy review process is required before a geothermal lease is approved.

BLM Geothermal Lease Nomination Form

Go to national BLM  Web Site

View the 2008 BLM Geothermal Lease Regulations

John Rishel Geothermal Steam Act Amendments of 2005

Nevada BLM Web Site

BLM Geothermal Web site

BLM Nevada Geothermal Lease Auction July 14, 2009

The Nevada BLM has posted the Notice, Stipulations, and list of parcels for its annual geothermal lease auction on July 14 at the State Office in Reno. This year 112 parcels totaling over 337,000 acres are up for leasing.

The Great Basin Center has created a GIS shapefile showing the location of sections containing Federal geothermal lease nominations for the lease auction. It was created by joining a list of nominated geothermal lease parcels with a TRS/Cadastral shapefile of Nevada. Because of this, only whole sections are shown even though only fractions within the specified section might available for lease. Also, if a section has areas covered by more than one lease parcel, only one parcel number will be shown. This shapefile is our best estimate of the location of the sections containing geothermal leases, BUT TO BE CERTAIN, CONTACT THE BLM. Click here for a copy of this shapefile, in our native Lambert projection.

BLM FIELD OFFICES

CLICK ON THE MAP ABOVE TO CONTACT THE LOCAL BLM FIELD OFFICE