The search for more energy has intensified across the West as record energy prices have pushed producers to drill more wells.

Despite environmental and wildlife concerns, Keith Rattie, chief executive of Salt Lake-based Questar Corp., said restricted access to public lands remains a barrier to increasing natural gas supplies.

Rattie is calling for major reforms to the National Environmental Policy Act.

"NEPA has been instrumental in the environmental progress we've made over the past 35 years," Rattie said in a recent speech. "We all want that progress to continue. But the NEPA process is in desperate need of adult supervision. NEPA abuse is the single biggest impediment to development of our domestic natural gas resources."

Rattie added that NEPA's detailed analysis and bureaucratic chokeholds have become an end unto themselves, rather than a process that ensures responsible development.

Congress, he said, should require federal agencies responsible for NEPA to re-engineer their processes, eliminate needless redundancy and set accountability metrics.

Under NEPA, Rattie said, federal agencies often deem current information in their possession inadequate, incomplete or unreliable. Projects, he said, are put on hold while the sponsor does the research, leading to delays and higher costs without any real benefit to the environment.

"While our quality of life depends on ever-increasing amounts of energy, our policies reveal a growing disdain for the things that energy companies must do to deliver the energy we need at prices we can afford," Rattie said.

"America is the only developed country in the world that has deliberately chosen not to develop a significant part of its domestic natural gas resource base."

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E-mail: danderton@desnews.com