Efforts to increase oil and gas drilling in the United States during the Bush years resulted in the Bureau of Land Management abusing a special exemption in federal law to bypass environmental reviews. The result was expanded drilling, which in some areas caused air pollution to exceed federal environmental standards.

A new report by the Government Accountability Office criticized the BLM for its “inappropriate” use of categorical exclusions for drilling permits. BLM was able to do this because of a provision in the 2005 Energy Policy Act allowing the federal government to ignore environmental laws requiring analyses of threatened or endangered species before oil and gas drilling is permitted on public lands.
 
GAO investigators determined that approximately 25% of drilling permits issued by BLM from 2006-2008 allowed the exemptions. Nearly two-thirds of these exemptions were issued by three BLM field offices: Vernal, Utah; Pinedale, Wyoming; and Farmington, New Mexico. The Vernal area now suffers from high levels of ozone pollution due to large-scale oil and gas drilling operations.
                                                                                                                                                        -Noel Brinkerhoff

GAO Report Chides BLM's Rush to Drill (by Patty Henetz, Salt Lake Tribune)
Energy Policy Act of 2005: Greater Clarity Needed to Address Concerns with Categorical Exclusions for Oil and Gas Development under Section 390 of the Act (Government Accountability Office) (PDF)