Plans by the Obama administration to do away with tax credits for US oil and gas companies have been made hastily and could come back to haunt both the administration and US consumers, in the form of increased oil imports and higher energy costs, a panel of oil and gas experts said on Tuesday.

Obama's budget proposal published last month will add $31.5 billion to the tax burden borne by domestic oil and gas producers over a 10-year period. It is part of a broad plan to increase energy independence that includes a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gas emissions.

Much of Obama's energy policy was developed during his presidential campaign when oil prices soared above $100 a barrel, allowing wind and solar power to compete on price with oil, natural gas and coal as a way of increasing the security of US energy supplies.

But analysts said the new administration has failed to adjust its policies to an economic recession and the rapid collapse of oil prices. Raising domestic costs for oil and natural gas development will only replace domestic crude with imported supplies and will stall domestic gas exploration, they argued.

"The deteriorating economic climate caused a reversal so that everything has been recast as a "green" jobs program, said Frank Verrastro, Energy Director with the Center for Strategic and International Studies who worked with the Obama campaign on its energy platform."When you try to find folks with within the administration, there is a "green" group and a realist group. There is concern on the oil and gas side that there is no one to talk to."

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner gave some insight into the Obama's thinking on energy policy earlier this month, telling senators that "for people whose behavior in energy use doesn't change, their costs will go up. You can't achieve these objectives if you don't change the incentives."

The White House budget proposal assumes that at least $79 billion per year in revenues will be generated from a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gas emissions that will become operational in 2012. Obama's ambitious plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 14% below 2005 levels by 2020 go a long way to explaining the proposal to end tax credits and incentives that were granted to oil and gas producers in the past.

"It is a punitive tax penalizing only the domestic oil and gas industry," James Gallogly, ConocoPhillips exploration and production chief told an energy seminar in Washington. "Overtaxing domestic industry reduces it competiveness and makes foreign sources more attractive, increasing the likelihood of greater imports."

Meanwhile the new administration has suffered a loss of momentum because it is still struggling to place people in positions of authority at the Energy and Interior departments and the Environmental Protection Agency.

"Our efforts to draft an energy bill are being hampered because we simply don't have the political folks in the departments to advise us," said Lisa Murkowski, (R-Alaska) ranking member on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. "The departments are still unable to give witnesses to our hearings."

Appointments for undersecretaries and deputy secretaries in many executive branch positions have been slowed by stricter White House rules against lobbyists entering public office.

Bill Murray, Washington