The bill, approved by the House Resources Committee, directs the Interior Department to accelerate the leasing of an estimated 2.5 million acres in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming for oil shale mining, rewriting policies in the Energy Policy Act signed by President Bush in August.

It also would further accelerate the approval process for oil and gas leases, open part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, and could exempt some oil and gas projects from key environmental laws.

Rep. John Peterson, R-Pa., said Democrats who tried unsuccessfully to strip several provisions from the bill are hindering the fight for energy independence. “We are dependent on thug-run countries; we are dependent on unstable countries for our energy,” he said. “We can't be against every kind of energy and end up having a country that can compete.”

The oil shale section of the House bill seeks to take oil shale development further, faster than was envisioned in a compromise in the Energy Policy Act that Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch helped negotiate.

It requires the interior secretary to lease 35 percent of potential oil shale deposits on federal lands in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming for commercial development regardless of the results of an environmental study mandated in the earlier Energy Act.

Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., estimated it could open 2.5 million acres in the three states to commercial oil shale production and warned that rushing oil shale development could result in another bust that crippled the region in the 1980s.

“There is enormous potential for oil shale and we're excited about it, but we believe we should move in a way that keeps the good faith with the states,” said Udall.

The Energy Department estimates the equivalent of 1 trillion barrels of oil is trapped in the rock, and high oil prices have industry revisiting whether it can be developed economically.

Another portion of the bill could exempt long-standing oil and gas leases from landmark environmental laws, environmentalists say. It states that drilling should be approved based on regulations in place when the lease was issued. In some cases, leases issued decades ago predate landmark environmental laws.

For example, in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, a company is seeking to drill on a lease it has held since 1969, said Steve Bloch, an attorney with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

That lease predates the National Environmental Policy Act and Clean Water Act and could be exempt from those laws.

“It's going to create a lot of confusion and a lot of risk in some very special places in Utah,” Bloch said.

A spokeswoman for the House Resources Committee said the provision was included to comply with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling regarding off-shore drilling. The language, however, appears to apply to on-shore drilling, as well.