DENVER — Concerns and conflict over the first round of federal oil shale leases in the Rockies have made the government more deliberate in the second round, a federal official said Friday.

Alan Gilbert, a senior adviser to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, said during an oil shale forum that a team of federal and state representatives will review the applications from three companies for 160-acre parcels.

The leases on public land are for research and development of technology to tap the oil locked in shale under northwest Colorado, Wyoming and Utah. The companies showing progress could expand work to 640 acres.

“There is a more deliberate pace, intentionally, toward this second round of leasing,” Gilbert said at a daylong oil shale conference by the University of Colorado Law School’s Natural Resources Law Center.

As a U.S. senator from Colorado, Salazar criticized the Bush administration’s plan for opening nearly 2 million acres of federal land in the Rockies to oil shale development before there was proven technology or more information about the potential impacts. He objected to the royalty rate and other terms of six research and development leases awarded in 2007 in Colorado and Utah.

As Interior secretary, Salazar made changes to the second-round of oil shale leases after first withdrawing the Bush administration’s solicitations for proposals. Salazar announced the changes in October, saying he was including more environmental safeguards and benchmarks, such as applying for permits within 18 months, to show that progress is being made.

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