More than a dozen drilling permits have been issued by the Bureau of Land Management in Utah without environmental review or public comment, part of an aggressive push by the Bush administration to open more public land to oil and gas production.

Field officials have been told to begin looking at issuing permits based on past studies of an entire project. The instructions are in a directive from the Interior Department's BLM and are expected to cover hundreds of anticipated new drilling applications.

In Utah, two such permits already have been issued by the Price BLM field office and 11 have been issued by the Vernal field office, said Laura Williams, spokeswoman for the BLM's state office in Utah.

President Bush and Congress authorized the streamlining as part of a 1,724-page energy bill signed into law in August. BLM officials, saying the need for energy supplies is immediate, showed unusual speed implementing it. Kathleen Clarke, the agency's director, sent out the new guidance Sept. 30.

Williams said the "instruction memorandum" allows interim direction to use the new "categorical exclusions" to move forward until final approval of Onshore Order No. 1, which is under public comment until Oct. 25.

"Yes, it is a priority of the White House," BLM deputy director Jim Hughes said in an interview. "We are moving expeditiously to implement the law. We think all these items will increase the supply this winter. However, everyone is saying it won't be enough to wipe out the impact of the hurricanes and all that."

The energy bill created new "categorical exclusions" under the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, for allowing new oil, gas and geothermal wells without first conducting environmental studies or soliciting public comment on them. The exclusions from normal permit requirements cover instances when less than 150 acres and no more than five acres in any one spot are disturbed, and where nearby drilling has occurred in the past five years.

"We don't think there will be any environmental degradation," Hughes said. "It's basically going into areas where you've already got stuff happening, where you've got existing NEPA work that had been completed. We think in many cases this is just duplicative work."

Energy producers still would be required to comply with other environmental laws, such as those intended to protect endangered species, air and water quality and cultural artifacts.

Environmentalists say they will continue to insist that environmental reviews are up-to-date.

"They have to have a fairly recent analysis of the impacts before they can apply these categorical exclusions," said Dave Alberswerth, public lands director for The Wilderness Society. "If they're planning to improperly apply these exemptions . . . in places where there are old land-use plans that are out of date, then they are asking for legal trouble."