30 U.S.C. § 226–3 — Lands not subject to oil and gas leasing

(a) Prohibition: The Secretary may not issue a lease under this chapter or the Geothermal Steam Act of 1970 on any of these federal lands: (1) land the surface managing agency has recommended for wilderness allocation; (2) land inside a Bureau of Land Management wilderness study area; (3) land Congress has designated as a wilderness study area, unless the law designating it specifically allows oil and gas leasing to continue; or (4) land within areas allocated for wilderness or further planning under Executive Communication 1504, Ninety-Sixth Congress (House Document 96–119), unless a land and resource management plan has since allocated the land to non-wilderness uses, or Congress has released it to other uses by statute. (b) Exploration: For National Forest or public land covered by this section, nothing here limits the authority of the Secretary of the Interior (or, for National Forest land reserved from the public domain, the Secretary of Agriculture) to permit exploring for oil, gas, coal, oil shale, phosphate, potassium, sulphur, gilsonite, or geothermal resources by means that do not require building or improving roads — as long as the activity is done in a way compatible with preserving the wilderness environment.