When Colorado's own Ken Salazar was named to head the Department of Interior, it was hard to know what to expect.

Then-Sen. Salazar was a moderate. Hailing from the San Luis Valley potato fields, he had stood up for the Roan Plateau, but he wasn't exactly in the environmentalists' camp. He was hardly industry's best friend, either.

Both the energy industry and environmental groups issued tepid welcomes, but neither side knew what to expect.

In his time in the Barack Obama administration, though, Salazar has come to look like one of the hardest-working people in Washington. Put in charge of a department limping after damaging corruption charges, and one widely seen as being in industry's pocket, Salazar set a path on reform.

For those who wonder if the Obama administration has accomplished anything, just look at Interior.

His first order of business was undoing the last business done by the outgoing Bush administration. He dedicated his first days to addressing scandals, pledging a return to science and promising to balance energy development and the environment.

He put aside bids on controversial gas leases in Utah that environmentalists feared would threaten national parks and sensitive public lands. He opened up some of those lands again, but kept the most sensitive spots off-limits.

He imposed tougher controls on oil shale leases, and called for an investigation of a Bush-era giveaway.

Meanwhile, he's pushed for more renewable resource development on public land.

Not surprisingly, the energy industry hasn't been pleased. As if slipping fuel prices wasn't enough, now they have to deal with an administration that isn't stocked with former energy industry executives.

As they stepped up their attacks, Salazar snapped back. Last week, in announcing a new round of oil and gas leases for 2010, smaller than the ones energy companies have been used to, Salazar took swipes at the industry.

“Trade groups for the oil and gas industry repeatedly launch attacks that have all the poison and assumption of election-year politics,” he said. “Trade groups for the oil and gas industry need to understand that they do not own the nation's public lands. Taxpayers do.”

Who would have expected that from the skinny guy in the bolo tie and cowboy hat?

The announcement comes as Interior has come under increasing fire from trade groups, who have complained that lease sales have been sharply curtailed under the Obama administration. The Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States has complained that the Obama administration has issued nearly 2,000 fewer leases on 1.1 million fewer acres in the intermountain West than the Clinton administration.

That group has complained that Obama has withheld $100 million worth of unissued leases in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming; reduced, deferred or withdrew other leases and created delays in permitting and environmental analyses. The result is an uncertainty in the leasing process that has left industry wary.

“Interior Secretary Salazar has repeatedly stated that the Obama Administration is not “anti-oil and gas,” the group said, “yet when it comes to Interior's onshore natural gas and oil program, the record suggests otherwise.”

Salazar rebuffed those allegations, instead blaming any uncertainty on the Bush administration for issuing too many leases in inappropriate places that led to protests, often from environmental groups.

“In the prior administration there were shortcuts taken, including leasing parcels that were next to national parks and not doing the appropriate review.”

He said the new leases were being offered despite what he called “huge undeveloped oil and gas acreages” that have been leased but not developed. Of 53,585 active onshore leases, Salazar said, 26,000 are not in production.

Expect to see similar battles in Colorado when Gov. Bill Ritter, a Democrat, runs up against his Republican challenger. So far that looks like it's going to be Scott McInnis, who quit his job as a lobbyist for the energy industry and other heavy-hitters to jump back into politics.

McInnis is already ratcheting up the rhetoric about Ritter driving away oil and gas jobs in an already weak economy. It wasn't Ritter, though. It wasn't Obama, either. Low fuel prices have gas rigs lying unused on the ground, and plenty of wells not being drilled.

Instead, the industry is drilling its rhetoric into the ground. Salazar, it seems, has had enough.

“Those companies need to make a choice,” he said. “Their shareholders didn't sign up to have their companies' trade associations become like an arm of a political party.”

I wonder which party he had in mind.

Write to David Frey via his Web site, www.davidfrey.me.