The Bureau of Land Management has opened a public comment period for 14 oil and gas leases in the Elko District in the northeastern part of Nevada.

The potential leases encompass approximately 20,600 acres which could be potentially included in a lease sale this September. The public comment period will end March 11.

“Leasing is the first step in the process to develop federal oil and gas resources,” the BLM explained in a press release. “Before development operations can begin, an operator must submit an application for permit to drill detailing development plans. The BLM reviews applications for permits to drill, posts them for public review, conducts an environmental analysis and coordinates with state partners and stakeholders.”

A lease sale for 11 oil and gas parcels in Nye County across 19,957 is scheduled for March 31. According to the BLM, it completed scoping on the parcels in September of 2025 and held a public comment period which closed in December of last year. A 30-day public protest period to receive additional public input closes on March 2. According to the BLM’s website, they received expressions of interest on all 11 parcels and plan to issue leases on March 31.

Under the Trump administration, the BLM has shifted tactics away from preferential treatment for wind and solar energy projects towards boosting domestic energy production largely within the oil, gas, coal and geothermal sectors, and deregulating access to natural resources on federal land all in a bid to increase domestic energy production.

The BLM controls the vast majority of land within the state of Nevada and almost all of it within Clark County. The federal agency manages approximately 245 million acres of land, located primarily in western states and Nevada has the highest percentage of federally controlled land in the nation.

Contact Patrick Blennerhassett at pblennerhassett@reviewjournal.com.

Former President Barack Obama said in a podcast interview Saturday that aliens are real, but they aren’t at Nevada’s Area 51.

During an appearance on YouTuber Brian Tyler Cohen’s show, Obama said he hadn’t seen extraterrestrials but that they existed.

“They’re not being kept in Area 51, there’s no underground facility, unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States,” Obama said during a rapid-fire round of questions at the end of the interview.

Cohen didn’t ask a follow-up question on the subject, and Obama didn’t explain his answer further.

“What was the first question you wanted answered when you became president?” Cohen asked next.

“Where are the aliens?” Obama replied with a laugh.

► VIDEO: Former President Barack Obama on Brian Tyler Cohen’s YouTube show.

———

Area 51, the classified operating location near the Nevada National Security Site about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, has long captured popular culture’s attention as a government facility believed to be holding UFOs and aliens.

In reality, the site has been a test bed for the nation’s high-tech aircraft dating back to when it was established in 1955 to test the high-flying U-2 spy plane. But the U.S. government did not acknowledge the facility’s existence until 2013, when the CIA declassified documents confirming Area 51’s use as a testing site for U-2 and SR-71 spy planes.

The secrecy surrounding the site’s purpose has made Area 51 the subject of countless out-of-this-world conspiracies, including claims that the facility holds pieces of alien spacecraft and technology that workers are trying to reverse-engineer.

That gave way to an alien fanatic subculture tied to Southern Nevada, with souvenir shops and businesses like the Area 51 Alien Center in Amargosa Valley and the Little A’Le’Inn in Rachel dotting the desert. In 1996, the state renamed Nevada Route 375 to Extraterrestrial Highway because of its proximity to Area 51.

Businesses in the area did not respond to requests for comment on Sunday afternoon.

Before the Las Vegas Aviators moved to Las Vegas Ballpark in 2019, the Triple-A baseball team played at Cashman Field from 2001 to 2018 as the Las Vegas 51s.

National media attention turned to Area 51 in September 2019 after a viral social media post saw millions demand a glimpse of extraterrestrial life.

A tongue-in-cheek Facebook event made by California man Matty Roberts had more than 2 million people sign up to storm Area 51, all pledging to run into the facility and “see them aliens.”

What began as an online joke became a four-day music festival known as Alienstock that drew thousands to the small Lincoln County communities of Rachel and Hiko, both located near Area 51.

Obama’s comments aren’t likely to sway the myth’s believers. An Ipsos poll conducted during the Storm Area 51 social media movement found a quarter of Americans thought that crashed UFO spacecrafts are held at the site. Slightly more than half of Americans, 52 percent, believed that extraterrestrial life exists.

Former US President
Barack Obama on Saturday said that he believes aliens are real, but maintained that he has no idea where they are. Obama made the shocking remark in a podcast hosted by YouTuber Brian Tyler Cowen.

“They’re real, but I haven’t seen them,” Obama told the YouTuber after he asked him about extraterrestrials. However, the former president did not offer any further details on what exactly he meant when he said that the aliens are “real”. No follow-up question on the topic was asked as well. But the proclamation by the former American president cast doubt on several longstanding theories about where they might be.

“They’re not being kept in Area 51, there’s no underground facility, unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States,” Obama said. It is pertinent to note that Area 51 refers to a highly secretive Air Force base in Groom Lake, Nevada. It has long been the subject of interest for conspiracy theorists who believe the government is hiding alien aircraft and bodies on the premises.

Barack Obama on aliens: “They’re real”

“But I haven’t seen them. They’re not being kept at Area 51. There’s no underground facility — unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the President of the United States.” pic.twitter.com/c6t0DYxewU

— UAP James (@UAPJames) February 14, 2026

America’s interest in aliens

Interest in potential alien contact with Earth has spiked in recent years after a series of government documents revealed several mysterious aircraft sightings. Leaked radar footage taken by the United States Air Force Reaper drones 13 years ago purportedly shows Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs), the government’s new term for
UFOs, flying over West Asia.

In 2021, the
Pentagon released three unclassified Navy videos that showed bizarre objects tearing through the sky as US servicemen reacted with awe. One UAP was seen rotating against the wind. Interestingly, this is not the first time Obama has commented on the existence of aliens and UFOs.

“When it comes to aliens, there are some things I just can’t tell you on air,” he teased to “The Late Late Show” host James Corden in a 2021 interview. He went on to confirm that the UAP sightings were legitimate and that the government could not explain the aircraft’s origin or their unusual flight patterns. “But what is true — and I’m actually being serious here — is that there’s footage and records of objects in the skies that we don’t know exactly what they are,” he said at that time.