H.R. 2556: CORE Act of 2025

The CORE Act of 2025 is mainly a data-and-reporting bill, but it is built to shape future offshore energy policy. Its core move is to require a transboundary hydrocarbon report not later than 18 months after enactment, sent to five specific congressional committees: the Senate Committees on Energy and Natural Resources and Foreign Relations, and the House Committees on Energy and Commerce, Natural Resources, and Foreign Affairs. That report must identify transboundary hydrocarbon reservoirs, analyze the legal framework around them, assess economic, environmental, and geopolitical implications, recommend cooperation strategies, use data from U.S.-Canada collaborative efforts, examine unresolved U.S.-Canada maritime boundaries, and review activity by Cuba, Mexico, Canada, the Bahamas, and Russia.

The bill also standardizes and expands the government's broader offshore inventory work. It amends 42 U.S.C. 15912 to require an inventory and analysis at least once every 5 years covering the Atlantic region, the Pacific region — specifically California, Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii — the Alaska region, the Gulf of America region, and U.S. territories. That analysis cannot stop at raw resource estimates: it must also look at global market influence, domestic job impacts including direct, indirect, and induced jobs, and how a lack of leasing affects national security and revenue sharing under GOMESA, the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and the National Historic Preservation Act. It also broadens the scope beyond oil and gas to include stone, sand, gravel, and offshore critical minerals.

Another major piece requires the Secretary of the Interior to improve the government's modeling. The Secretary must consult with the National Petroleum Council, the Society of Petroleum Engineers, and the United States Association for Energy Economics. The first assessment is due not later than 1 year after enactment, with later assessments every 10 years. Within 1 year of each assessment, the Secretary must either publish an update or publish a report explaining why an update is unnecessary. The bill also requires submission of the report under 42 U.S.C. 15912(d) not later than 1 year after enactment.

Finally, the bill orders an international scorecard. The Secretary of the Interior, consulting with the Secretaries of State and Energy, must publish a comparative analysis of offshore oil and gas practices for major offshore producing countries not later than 1 year after enactment, and then at least once every 10 years. That report must be posted on the Department of the Interior website and sent to the House Committee on Natural Resources and the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. It must include specific data points like acres offered for lease, auction frequency, lease structures and fiscal terms, oil production in barrels, gas production in cubic feet, historical trends and forecasts, regional market demand, export capability, and probabilistic estimates of undiscovered and discovered resources prepared with the U.S. Geological Survey.