WALNUT CREEK, CALIFORNIA – Imagine hiking up Mount Diablo, seeing the beautiful twisting trails, bikes speeding down the mountain, perhaps a family of deer…and oil derricks.
That’s the reality that Save Mount Diablo, a local group, says could soon face the East Bay mountain.
The group is sounding the alarm over a federal planning process that could reopen parts of the Bay Area to new oil and gas leasing — including lands in and around Mount Diablo State Park.
Save Mount Diablo says the Federal government is moving forward with plans that would open large swaths of public land to oil and gas development, and that Mount Diablo could be among the places swept up in the change.
There’s a much broader context to this local question–the mountain isn’t being specifically targeted.
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The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is in the middle of a major environmental review focused on oil and gas leasing and development within the Central Coast Field Office planning area — a region that includes Contra Costa County along with Alameda, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Monterey, and San Benito counties (plus portions of several Central Valley counties).
A map from the BLM shows the areas around Mount Diablo as “Open for Leasing” under new plans.
BLM’s draft review is tied to whether the agency will revise earlier decisions about where leasing could occur and under what conditions. The process is part of a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS), which is intended to analyze environmental impacts and determine whether changes are needed based on updated information and circumstances.
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If Mount Diablo is a state park, though, why would this matter? It’s confusing, but comes down to esoteric things like the difference between rights to the surface of land and to the stuff underneath it.
It’s called a “split estate,” where surface land ownership and subsurface mineral ownership do not match (for example, a public agency manages the land on top, but federal mineral rights exist underneath).
The Central Coast planning area described in the Federal Register notice includes both public land and “Federal mineral estate,” which is the category that often drives these conflicts.
That is why local groups say a federal leasing decision could ripple into places hikers and families think of as purely protected open space.
For their part, the BLM says activities like drilling and fracking would have minimal impacts. Advocates of more drilling argue that State and Federal park agencies were always intended to balance preservation of land with use of that land to enrich the United States. Drilling and fracking on these lands, in that model, is part of using them to their maximum potential.
Environmental groups argue the federal review still fails to account for the real-world impacts of additional drilling and fracking, especially given updated climate science and the potential for localized harms.
If you are worried about Mount Diablo being pulled into federal oil and gas leasing, the most direct lever is the public comment process tied to the SEIS. The Federal Register notice spells out where the draft documents are hosted and how comments are submitted (through BLM’s ePlanning project page).
Here’s a link directly to that page: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/01/13/2026-00468/notice-of-availability-of-the-draft-central-coast-field-office-oil-and-gas-leasing-and-development
It is also worth watching what local land and park advocates publish over the next several weeks, because they often translate dense federal documents into concrete maps and parcel-level explanations for the public.
The big maps from BLM cover the entire state. Local groups will get a lot more granular in determining exactly which lands might end up drillable.
We’ll be following this story closely. Make sure to join my free 925 News newsletter so I can update you as soon we we know more.
