From CFACT

By Tom Pyle

America is blessed with vast, long-term oil and natural gas reserves. Robust exploration is essential to sustaining and growing the energy industry. Geophysical seismic surveys have long been the go-to method in detecting our reserves and updating the resource base. Case in point: technically recoverable U.S. oil resources were estimated at 1,657.5 billion barrels in 2024, a 15% increase from 2011 estimates. Remarkably, the industry expanded these reserves despite a national consumption of 7.3 billion barrels in 2021. This trend is not expected to slow down, making energy infrastructure projects more critical than ever.

When the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was signed into law more than 50 years ago, its intent was to better protect the environment and mitigate impacts from large-scale projects. The goal was to ensure plans were well-thought-out before moving dirt, not to tie up projects in permitting backlogs or stop them from being built. Yet, that’s exactly what’s happened.

NEPA has become so misaligned with its original intent that it’s damaging our ability to compete globally for critical minerals and to maintain our grid to keep up with demand growth, creating delays that threaten U.S. energy security.

This is why NEPA reform remains a priority for Congress and the Trump administration.

In a major step forward, on February 23, 2026, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced historic final reforms to its NEPA procedures. These sweeping changes rescind more than 80% of the department’s prior NEPA regulations, shifting most requirements to a streamlined departmental NEPA Handbook of Implementing Procedures.

In December 2025, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a permitting bill to shorten timelines and limit frivolous litigation. For too long, agenda-driven activist groups have wielded unchecked power to stall projects. NEPA’s current structure practically invites lawsuits, and that needs to change.

The Breakthrough Institute and legal experts analyzed over 380 NEPA cases and found that lawsuits alone can delay projects by an average of four years. Delays and uncertainty mean grid reliability suffers, jobs are lost or never realized, and significant tax revenue is lost. In the meantime, consumers are stuck paying exorbitant energy costs. NEPA’s regulatory inefficiencies hurt more than just project development, but the conversation does not stop there.

Some projects that undergo NEPA review also trigger consultation requirements under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and further permit evaluation under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA). Although each has separate processes, timelines, and agencies, they overlap extensively in the types of environmental impact analyses, often resulting in duplicative calculations that further extend timelines.

Similar to NEPA, MMPA is 50 years old and was originally intended to protect certain species in decline due to human activities. However, decades of environmental litigation have stretched the MMPA’s interpretation beyond Congress’s intent, and it is now being used as a weapon against energy exploration, with anti-energy activists exploiting its vague, ambiguous language.

As EnerGeo explains, “the goal of this exploitation has little to do with the protection of marine mammals. Rather, it is intended to halt offshore energy exploration by using the MMPA to create restrictions, delays, and bottlenecks to conducting geophysical science and understanding.”

However, some headway has been made. This past summer, the U.S. House Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife, and Fisheries held a legislative hearing to address MMPA and ESA reform, calling for congressional action to reduce regulatory uncertainty.

The reality is that our society depends on this technology to support American energy production safely and efficiently, and this is only possible through the clear and transparent application of the laws as originally intended.

Seismic exploration provides data that would otherwise be impossible to obtain. Geophysical projects help us understand the complex energy ecosystem, but inefficient permitting requirements and legislative hurdles continue to stand in their way. We need to reconsider how the MMPA is being used and applied. Is this what it was created to do?

The path forward is simple: keep MMPA reform a top priority on the legislative totem pole. While recent discussions signal encouraging progress, it is imperative to maintain momentum to ensure the U.S. can access the data it needs for energy security.

This article originally appeared at RealClear Energy