Still, Colorado auctions where no one wants nearly half the acreage are part of a "nonsensical" new system, said the nonprofit watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense.

The critics also panned the next part of the new oil and gas lease process, which puts leftover parcels from competitive sales up for noncompetitive leases at a minimal fee of $75. The watchdog groups say the process allows oil and gas companies to nominate acreage they want to explore, decline bidding, and then pick up the same property for bargains later on. It's much harder for the public to tell who takes those properties in the noncompetitive sales, they said.

The taxpayers group noted the reconciliation act also returned future royalty rates on petroleum products taken from the leased public lands to 12.5%, where the rate had been for more than a century. The Biden administration had raised the rate on federal onshore lands extraction from 12.5%  to 16.67%. Lease and royalty money is divided between the federal government and the state.

They project a loss of $57 million in potential royalty revenue from the Colorado acres under the new system over the life of the leases. Nationally, the group projects a $454 million lifetime loss of royalties on the acreage leased since July.

"Once again, taxpayers are being shortchanged as companies lock in decades of drilling under terms that don't reflect the true value of America's oil and gas resources," Taxpayers for Common Sense said.