The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) continually assesses undiscovered, technically recoverable oil and gas on land and in state waters, under the Energy Act of 2000 and the Energy Policy Act of 2005. This estimate allocates those resources to federal lands onshore. It was prepared in response to the Interior Secretary's Order 3417, "Addressing the National Energy Emergency."
The totals
| Resource | Mean estimate under federal lands |
|---|---|
| Oil | 29.4 billion barrels (29,414.7 million) |
| Gas | 391.6 trillion cubic feet (391,553.0 billion) |
| Natural gas liquids | 8.4 billion barrels (8,410.4 million) |
These are technically recoverable volumes — not economically recoverable resources or reserves.
Federal lands and USGS geologic provinces. USGS
Where it is
Top five states
| Oil (million barrels) | Gas (billion cubic feet) | NGL (million barrels) |
|---|---|---|
| Alaska 14,458.1 | Alaska 111,034.2 | New Mexico 3,916.5 |
| New Mexico 8,925.8 | New Mexico 85,393.7 | Wyoming 1,568.1 |
| Nevada 1,407.3 | Colorado 60,016.0 | Alaska 926.0 |
| Wyoming 988.3 | Wyoming 57,138.0 | Montana 600.7 |
| Texas 915.5 | Texas 16,776.9 | Colorado 374.6 |
Top five geologic provinces
| Oil (million barrels) | Gas (billion cubic feet) | NGL (million barrels) |
|---|---|---|
| Northern Alaska 14,058.9 | Northern Alaska 104,100.4 | Permian Basin 3,864.7 |
| Permian Basin 8,936.3 | Permian Basin 58,468.4 | Southwestern Wyoming 1,637.0 |
| Eastern Great Basin 1,816.8 | Southwestern Wyoming 58,267.7 | Northern Alaska 844.4 |
| Gulf Coast Mesozoic 1,191.7 | Uinta-Piceance Basin 55,293.7 | Montana Thrust Belt 589.5 |
| Williston Basin 548.6 | San Juan Basin 29,106.4 | Gulf Coast Mesozoic 392.6 |
Full tables by state and by province are in the fact sheet and in Mercier (2025).
How it was done
The USGS has assessed or reassessed 579 conventional and continuous assessment units since its 1995 national assessment. For each, a GIS overlay of the Bureau of Land Management's federal land map shows what share of the unit is federal land, and that share of the unit's mean resource is assigned to federal lands — if federal land is 12% of a unit's area, 12% of its undiscovered oil and gas is counted as federal. As in earlier allocations, the report assumes federal surface ownership generally includes the mineral rights.
Federal lands include those of the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service (including their wilderness, roadless and protected areas), wilderness study areas, and lands of the Department of Energy, Department of Defense, Bureau of Reclamation and Tennessee Valley Authority.
| Resource type | How it's assessed |
|---|---|
| Conventional | probability distributions for the sizes and numbers of undiscovered fields, plus coproduct ratios, run through a Monte Carlo simulation |
| Continuous (shale oil and gas, tight oil and gas, coal-bed gas) | distributions for productive area, well spacing, future success rate, untested area and ultimate recovery per well, also run through a Monte Carlo simulation |
Both methods have been reviewed by independent bodies outside the USGS. Where the line between conventional and continuous is unclear for lack of data, an accumulation is treated as conventional. Tar sands, oil shales, gas hydrates and gas in geopressured brines are left out, since no technically recoverable resources are generally reported for them.
Not comparable with earlier estimates
The USGS allocated resources to federal lands before, in 1990 and 1998, but those numbers can't be compared directly:
- 1990 was based on the 1989 national assessment, which covered only conventional resources.
- 1998 was based on the 1995 assessment, which for the first time included some continuous resources — but little was then known about them, and many were not assessed, or only partly.
This estimate is based on the quantitative assessments of all conventional and continuous resources onshore completed since 1995.
More: USGS Energy Resources Program.
Sources
Based on Schenk CJ, Mercier TJ, and the National and Global Oil and Gas Assessment Project Federal Lands Resource Allocation Team, "An estimate of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil and gas resources underlying Federal lands of the onshore United States, 2025," U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet 2025–3032, USGS (doi:10.3133/fs20253032); a work of the United States government in the public domain.
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