“There are opportunities for greater efficiencies,” Tommy Beaudreau, the acting assistant secretary of Land and Minerals Management for the Interior Department, told a subcommittee of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The hearing focused on the Obama administration’s efforts to allow drilling for natural resources on federally owned land.

The federal government approved 7,124 permits for drilling on federal lands in 2007, with an average approval time of 196 days. However, the Obama administration approved only 4,256 in 2012, at an average time of 228 days, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah) said.

States can take under a month, and sometimes under two weeks, to issue a permit, multiple congressmen said.

Beaudreau argued after the hearing that states have different regulatory requirements and the Interior Department has to take multiple factors, including multiple uses of federal land, into account when issuing permits.

“That takes time,” Beaudreau said. “That takes public engagement. That takes analysis.”

Frustration about the federal permitting time led Rep. Blake Farenthold (R., Texas) to ask if the department was intentionally sitting on permits in order to delay drilling. Beaudreau assured him the department was not doing that.

Rep. James Lankford (R., Okla.), chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy Policy, Health Care, and Entitlements, showed a map at the beginning of the hearing of drilling locations around federal land in North Dakota. He noted that companies are drilling all around federal land—often right up to the border—but are not actually venturing onto federal land to drill. Lankford argued that the regulatory burden is too high to make it worth it, even though royalty costs are lower on federal land than elsewhere.

Unleashing the resources on federal land would allow “American energy independence and broad economic renaissance,” Lankford argued.

Opening up all federal land to drilling would increase GDP by $127 billion each year over the next seven years and create 552,000 jobs over the next seven years, Lankford said, citing an Institute for Energy Research study.

Subcommittee ranking member Jackie Speier (D., Calif.) argued that issued and unused leases pose a greater problem for the United States than federal land that is closed to drilling.

The Obama administration has been criticized in the past for its reluctance to allow drilling on federal lands. Republican candidate Mitt Romney attacked President Barack Obama during the campaign for the drop in drilling on federal lands under his watch.

The Government Accountability Office issued a report last May asserting that America’s oil shale formations could be equal to the entirety of the world’s proven oil reserves.

The Interior Department is working on a new regulation for hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, on federal lands, Beaudreau said at the hearing.

Lankford wondered after the hearing if the department could handle yet another responsibility, given the inefficiencies that already plague it.

Today’s report from the AP indicates each death of the 83,000 “hunting birds” is a federal crime, however wind energy firms are spared fines and prosecution levied on other energy companies for similar violations:

The Obama administration has never fined or prosecuted a wind farm for killing eagles and other protected bird species, shielding the industry from liability and helping keep the scope of the deaths secret, an Associated Press investigation has found.

More than 573,000 birds are killed by the country’s wind farms each year, including 83,000 hunting birds such as hawks, falcons and eagles, according to an estimate published in March in the peer-reviewed Wildlife Society Bulletin.

Each death is federal crime, a charge that the Obama administration has used to prosecute oil companies when birds drown in their waste pits, and power companies when birds are electrocuted by their power lines. No wind energy company has been prosecuted, even those that repeatedly flout the law.

[...]

The large death toll at wind farms shows how the renewable energy rush comes with its own environmental consequences, trade-offs the Obama administration is willing to make in the name of cleaner energy.

[...]

When companies voluntarily report deaths, the Obama administration in many cases refuses to make the information public, saying it belongs to the energy companies or that revealing it would expose trade secrets or implicate ongoing enforcement investigations.

Nearly all the birds being killed are protected under federal environmental laws, which prosecutors have used to generate tens of millions of dollars in fines and settlements from businesses, including oil and gas companies, over the past five years.

“What it boils down to is this: If you electrocute an eagle, that is bad, but if you chop it to pieces, that is OK,” said Tim Eicher, a former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service enforcement agent based in Cody, Wyo.

Despite the obvious inequity in treatment between wind energy and the fossil fuel industry, the Obama Administration has issued new guidelines designed to further accomodate the wind lobby:

But under the Obama administration’s new guidelines, wind-energy companies don’t face additional scrutiny until they have a “significant adverse impact” on wildlife or habitat.

That rare exception for one industry substantially weakened the government’s ability to enforce the law and ignited controversy inside the Interior Department.

“U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service does not do this for the electric utility industry or other industries,” Kevin Kritz, a government wildlife biologist in the Rocky Mountain region wrote in internal agency comments in September 2011. “Other industries will want to be judged on a similar standard.”

The Obama administration, however, repeatedly overruled its own experts. In the end, the wind-energy industry, which was part of the committee that drafted and edited the guidelines, got almost everything it wanted.

Proposed federal regulations will increase protected bird killing permits for the renewable energy sector from the current 5 year to 30 year intervals.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) sent a letter Tuesday to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, pressing the agency to release communications from Department of Energy and DOI officials regarding the leases.

“More than six months ago Senator Jeff Sessions, the Ranking Member on the Senate Committee on the Budget, requested specific information regarding DOI’s possible preferential treatment of certain renewable or alternative energy projects—all of which received taxpayer-funded loan guarantees,” the letter reads. “Despite repeated attempts to have this request fulfilled, DOI has not produced an adequate response. This is unacceptable.”

The letter requests that DOI hand over the communications by no later than June 12. “If you fail to comply with this request, we will have no choice but to consider the use of compulsory process,” the letter warns.

The participation of House Oversight adds a measure of clout to Session’s probe. The committee is the chief investigative arm of the House of Representatives and has been delving extensively into the Department of Energy’s loan program.

A senior Oversight aide told the Free Beacon that Issa decided to get involved after DOI continued to stonewall Senator Sessions’ requests.

Sessions originally requested documentation and communications related to the lease program in a November 2011 letter to Salazar. After a follow up letter from Sessions, DOI responded by sending public documents already available on its website.

At issue are a series of lease approvals for several renewable energy projects in California and Nevada.

DOI issued a secretarial order in 2009 to fast track the siting of renewable energy projects on public lands managed by the agency. The effort was part of the Obama administration’s larger green energy initiative.

Seven solar companies received fast-tracked lease approvals in a no-bid process. Those seven companies also all received loan guarantees worth billions from the Department of Energy under its renewable energy loan program, as well as renewable energy grants from the Treasury Department.

As previously reported by the Free Beacon, there were extensive political ties among the solar companies, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.), the Department of Energy, DOI, and the Commerce Department.

The Oversight Committee recently obtained e-mails from one of the solar companies, BrightSource Energy, which committee Republicans say show a direct link between the loan recipient and the White House.

Commerce Secretary John Bryson was chairman of BrightSource at the time.

The leases also raise questions over the agency’s adherence to environmental regulations. They were approved much faster than traditional oil and gas projects.

The disparity between conventional energy leases and the appearance of political favoritism led Republicans to begin probing the fast-track program.

A Department of Interior spokesperson was not available for comment.

The administration’s latest attempt to claim it is expanding oil production came from the Department of Interior. The agency recently announced a new program to streamline and automate permit applications for oil and gas drilling.

The project is an expansion of a pilot program and is expected to reduce average approval time for drilling permits from 298 to 60 days.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said that, “By upgrading and improving our oil and gas drilling permit processing systems and technologies we believe we can improve efficiencies while ensuring thorough reviews for safety and compliance.”

But the pilot project was originally created by a provision in a 2005 Republican-sponsored energy bill. Not only that, but the administration has spent the last four years trying to repeal portions of it.

In its 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013 budgets, the Obama administration requested the pilot program, which was funded with money from sales of oil leases, be zero-funded. Instead, the administration requested increased permit fees on oil well operators.

“It’s like they killed somebody and are now taking credit for resurrecting them,” said Dan Kish, the senior vice president for policy at the Institute for Energy Research, an organization that promotes expanded oil and gas production.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, while applauding the program, noted the Interior Department was “taking credit for a program they have consistently tried to shut down, similar to taking credit for increased oil production that resulted not from its own policies, but, rather, from those implemented by previous administrations.”

However, an Interior official said the comparison was “apples and oranges.” The old program had little to do with automating the permit process, the official told the Free Beacon.

“In short, we believe that companies, not the taxpayers, should be able to help foot the bill for processing [Applications for Permit to Drill],” an Interior official said. “It appears that some on the other side want to continue to give oil companies a break when it comes to who pays for processing their permits.”

This isn’t the only energy project the president has attempted to take credit for in recent months.

“Under my administration, America is producing more oil today than at any time in the last eight years,” the president told an audience in late March during a four-state tour to promote his self-described “all of the above” energy policy.

Republicans, however, have hammered the administration for blocking the Keystone XL pipeline and dragging its feet on approving new leases for drilling.

“Over the past three years, President Obama has delayed, blocked, and restricted access to America’s energy resources, leading to a seven percent drop in federal energy production and no real options to address the energy crisis we face today,” House Speaker John Boehner wrote in a recent column.

President Obama has been emboldened by liberal journalists and commentators who have defended the administration’s energy record. Talking Points Memo published a chart claiming to show how the oil and gas extraction industry had flourished under Obama’s presidency.

“Oil and gas extraction is a relatively small industry, but it has prospered in the weak economy, even as other industries climb slowly out of the great recession,” TPM’s Brian Beutler wrote. “Energy experts say that the oil boom itself is also due to factors outside of Obama’s control, but this gives the lie to the notion that Obama’s been actively squelching it.”

What TPM’s chart shows, however, is that the industry was climbing during the recession, which began in 2007, only to decline after Obama took office.

Oil extraction took a big hit in 2010 after the Deep Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, costing the industry jobs.

The Commerce Department estimates that the U.S. lost 8,000 to 12,000 jobs as a result of the six-month deep-water drilling moratorium imposed by the administration in the wake of the spill; a Louisiana State University study estimates more than 19,500 jobs were lost.

And even though the moratorium has been lifted, the number of drilling permits issued in the Gulf by the administration has yet to return to pre-spill levels.

Fossil fuel production on federal lands has also dropped significantly during the Obama administration.

The proportion of natural gas produced on federal land has fallen from 35 percent in 2003 to just above 20 percent today. The Congressional Research Service released a report revealing 96 percent of the increase in domestic oil production since 2007 has occurred on non-federal lands.

On March 11, 2009, the Department of Interior [DOI] issued a secretarial order to fast track the siting of renewable energy projects on public lands managed by the agency.

The move was part of the administration’s larger green energy initiative, which has pumped billions of dollars in stimulus money into renewable energy.

Seven solar companies received fast-tracked approval by DOI to lease federal lands in a no-bid process: Abengoa Solar, BrightSource Energy, First Solar, Nevada Geothermal Power, NextEra Energy Resources, Ormat Nevada, and SolarReserve.

Those seven companies all received loan guarantees worth billions from the Department of Energy under its renewable energy loan program, as well as renewable energy grants from the Treasury Department.

The federal government has dedicated 21 million acres to these renewable energy projects in the three years since the secretarial order. That is more land than it has set aside for oil and gas exploration over the last decade.

The speed with which the projects were approved, coupled with the fact that the companies had already received Energy Department loan guarantees with strict timelines attached, has raised questions as to whether Interior’s actions were predetermined.

Federal agencies are required under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to consider all environmental outcomes of an action before proceeding with it. Federal decisions can be overturned if a court finds they were predetermined.

“The question is, are these basically pre-cooked outcomes?” a former Bureau of Labor Management (BLM) employee told the Free Beacon. “And when you really start thinking about it, does the fact that these companies had loan guarantees put them at the top of the pecking order?”

The BLM defended the process.

“Clearly these were not pre-decisional determinations on these projects,” Ray Brady, Chief of Lands and Realty Division at BLM, said. “These were projects that were farthest along in their process work. The companies had submitted complete development plans and had already initiated NEPA compliance.”

The Institute for Energy Research, a group that supports increased oil and gas production, said the divide between how the Obama administration treats oil and renewable energy is striking.

“It’s amazing because at the same time the administration’s been pushing renewable energy, it’s been going the opposite direction on conventional oil and gas, adding delays and speed bumps,” Senior Vice President for Policy at IER Dan Kish said. “The biggest delay with doing business on federal land is litigation hooks. Everybody and their brother has the right to weigh in and appeal, which puts capital and investment at stake.”

The Congressional Research Service recently released a report revealing 96 percent of the increase in domestic oil production since 2007 has occurred on non-federal lands.

Kish said the fast-tracked process shields the projects from regular scrutiny.

“The entry points for appellants and litigants have been wiped out, so they don’t have to put up with the things everyone else does with when dealing with the federal government,” he said.

However, the Bureau of Land Management says it was making the process simpler for both the companies and the public. Typically, oil companies must go through environmental review for both the lease and the drilling project.

“It’s really kind of a streamlined process that brings those decisions into one document,” Brady said. “That makes it easier for the public as well.”

Critics say that the close to 20 years the Army spent trying to expand its base at Fort Irwin, located near a Brightsource solar project in the Mojave Desert, is an example of just how much easier the fast-tracked process was for the green energy companies.

Planning for the Fort Irwin expansion began in 1988, but the final supplemental environmental impact statement was not completed until 2005.

A former Fish and Wildlife Service official who worked on the Fort Irwin expansion said the roadblocks faced by the Army were extensive.

“I had at least two generals at the office of Interior begging us to get the biological opinion completed,” the source said. “You should see the requirements placed on army.”

The Mojave is home to the endangered desert tortoise. Parties leasing federal lands in the Mojave are allowed to “take,” or kill, only a certain number of tortoises per year.

The army was allowed to kill only three tortoises per year on their 75,000-acre project.

Yet the four solar projects located in the same area were approved to kill roughly 15 of the animals a year on projects collectively affecting only about 12,000 acres.

Environmental and cultural problems have arisen at other projects as well.

NextEra Energy’s $1-billion, nearly 2,000-acre Genesis solar energy project, backed by $852 million in Energy Department loans, has run into concerns that it is killing the sensitive desert kit fox population, as well as possibly desecrating an ancient Native American burial site.

According to California Energy Commission records, the Genesis project was approved despite “significant environmental impacts” that were deemed to be outweighed by “overriding economic, legal, social, technological or other benefits.”

Despite these concerns, major environmental groups were silent on the projects or actively lobbied for them. The national office of the Sierra Club sent out a memo to all local chapters announcing it would not pursue litigation against the Brightsource project.

The Center for Biological Diversity, a notoriously litigious environmental group, signed a confidential agreement not to oppose the Ivanpah project in exchange for increased protections for the desert tortoise, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The National Resources Defense Council characterized the decision as part of a broader, more pragmatic strategy by environmental groups to work with companies and the government.

“Our greatest challenge today is to make the hard choices that will provide the greatest environmental benefit for all and result in the fewest impacts to wildlife and wild lands,” wrote Johanna Wald on the NRDC blog.

Policy expert Kish questioned the choices environmental groups and the administration made in backing the fast-tracked projects.

“If one was a cynic or understood how this town worked, it would become pretty quickly apparent the collective enforcement of laws from the administration is based on who their friends are,” Kish said. “It comes down to: Do they or don’t they believe these laws are important and should be followed?”

The environmental impacts of the solar projects will be felt for long after the Obama administration.

“If these companies pull out and attempt to restore the land—if they can—it will take a long time,” Dennis Schramm, a former superintendent at the Mojave National Preserve, told the Los Angeles Times. “It will be 100 years. It might be 200 years. That’s how long it would take to restore the desert.”

A former official who worked at the Bureau of Land Management for more than 30 years and described himself as a conservationist said: “To see the department bend over backwards and do everything they can to put up these solar farms, it doesn’t seem like the same yardstick is being used, but they really do believe this is the tech answer to fossil fuel. They’re true believers.”