DENVER - The Bureau of Land Management billed meetings on a program for handling energy permits as listening sessions, and it got an earful Tuesday from people who say the goal is speed above all else - the environment, landowners' rights, wildlife.

BLM officials scheduled two sessions at an east-Denver hotel to discuss and take comments on its year-old oil and gas pilot project, which beefed up staffs in seven regional offices in the Rockies - including two in Wyoming - to handle the explosion in applications to drill on federal land.

Congress mandated the program in the 2005 energy bill, adding staffers and employees from other federal agencies in BLM offices in Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah in a kind of one-stop-shopping approach. The Wyoming offices involved are in Buffalo and Rawlins.

Alan Kesterke, the program's manager, said the seven regional offices process from 70 percent to 75 percent of all the drilling applications the BLM gets.

"Hopefully, it will be easier to deal with federal government as a whole on oil and gas issues," Kesterke said.

While it might be easier for industry, it's a nightmare for landowners and others, said some of about 100 people in the packed meeting room.

"From a landowner's standpoint, there's no way for me to protect my land," said Steve Adami, a rancher near Buffalo.

Adami said energy companies were able to post a $2,000 bond when they failed to strike a deal with him and moved in rigs to drill 11 wells. He owns the land but not the minerals underneath, resulting in a so-called "split estate."

Mineral owners can develop them or lease them to someone else. State and federal agencies encourage negotiations with landowners, but companies can post bonds and drill if an agreement isn't reached.

Tweeti Blancett said the ranch she and her husband, Linn, have near Aztec in northwest New Mexico "is gone" because of impacts from oil and gas operations. Their ranch encompasses federal, state and private land.

"There's plenty of money to do it right, but it's not being done right," said Blancett, whose husband's family has ranched in the same area for six generations.

Speakers contended the pilot program's emphasis is on speeding approval of permits while well inspections, monitoring of water and other resources and enforcement go wanting. The critics included former BLM employees.

Ann Morgan, a former BLM state director in Colorado and Nevada, said the agency doesn't have enough staffers to keep up with the inspections and enforcement of laws.

"The goal of this is to speed up permits. I do not believe we have a need to speed up permitting," said Morgan, now vice president of the BLM Public Lands Campaign of The Wilderness Society.

Daniel Arthur of Tulsa, Okla., an energy consultant, was one of the few to compliment the BLM.

"I wanted to say 'thank you' for doing the pilot offices. They're a step in the right direction," Arthur said.

The compliment came with a caveat, though. Arthur said he was concerned that involving more federal employees in the process might bog down rather than streamline the process.

Spokesman Doug Hock said EnCana Oil and Gas USA hasn't seen a slowdown in approval of permits by the Glenwood Springs office in western Colorado, despite its transition from a local office to a regional energy post.

"We've always had a good relationship with the office there," said Hock, who wasn't at the meeting.