Oil development on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation should move more rapidly with a promise by the Interior secretary to add nine more employees to manage leases and permits for new wells.

The reservation is in the heart of the lucrative Bakken formation, but so far, only one well has been drilled there because of few employees and a laborious 49-step federal permitting process.

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said six of the nine employees will be located at the Bureau of Indian Affairs office in New Town and the other three at the Great Plains Regional Office. Experienced employees will be detailed to Fort Berthold until the nine positions are filled, he said.

The move came after Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., met with Kempthorne last month to push for more personnel to get development jump-started on the reservation.

Dorgan said it isn't fair for bureaucracy to leave Fort Berthold behind, when there is production all around the reservation into the Bakken formation, with an estimated 4 billion barrels of recoverable oil.

The one Marathon Oil well on the reservation southwest of New Town took three years to get permitted.

The Department of the Interior estimates there is a potential to drill 100 wells on Fort Berthold, which would have estimated gross revenue of $3 billion over the next decade. This new production could lead to potential annual royalty payments of more than $528 million to trust land owners.

Dorgan said the increased staff is a good start, but the lengthy permitting process needs to go faster.

"I intend to keep monitoring the progress of the federal agencies involved to make sure Fort Berthold can contribute to our nation's energy production," Dorgan said.

Kempthorne also committed $500,000 to speed up National Environmental Policy Act reviews. The BIA expects to process 1,500 leases and more than 100 drilling permits on Fort Berthold, and a programmatic approach is needed to handle the work volume, he said.