Interior head ends 1st year with vows of reforms

DENVER — Interior Secretary Ken Salazar started on the job a year ago pledging to clean up an agency hit by scandals and assailed by critics as under the sway of the oil and gas industry.

Starting his second year as head of the nation's biggest landowner, Salazar said he will announce reforms in how energy leases are issued on federal lands and changes in how endangered species are protected.

The Colorado rancher and former U.S. senator's actions on energy and endangered species won him praise and denunciation. The oil and gas industry has accused him of discouraging development on public lands, while conservationists see his second look at leases approved under President George W. Bush as a swing toward balance.

Environmentalists are suing to overturn Salazar's decision to remove wolves in the northern Rockies from the endangered species list, a decision proponents believe was warranted as the population grew to an estimated 1,600.

"It's been a tough year," Salazar said in a New Year's Eve interview with The Associated Press.

But he said he feels good about the progress on the task he took on.

"What President Obama asked me to do when he brought me there was to reform the department and fix problems," Salazar said.

He started last January with a visit to the Colorado office of the Minerals Management Service where more than a half dozen workers were disciplined or fired in 2008 after being accused of using drugs, having sex with oil and gas industry representatives and accepting gifts. Wearing cowboy boots and a hat, Salazar introduced a new ethics code discouraging "even the appearance of impropriety."

"There's a new sheriff in town," Salazar said during a news conference near the wind-whipped foothills of Colorado's Front Range.

Part of the new agenda has been to move quickly to develop renewable energy on public lands while making sure the public gets a fair return on current mineral extraction. Salazar suspended most of the 77 oil and gas leases sold in a highly contested auction in the Bush administration's last days.

He first rescinded, then scaled back a lease offer for more research, development and demonstration oil shale projects in Wyoming, Utah and Colorado. In October, he announced an investigation into last-minute changes made by the Bush administration that locked in royalty rates on thousands of acres of previously issued oil shale research leases on federal land.

But while Interior moves quickly to develop renewable energy on public lands, Salazar has insisted that natural gas is an important part of the country's energy mix.