"Native American communities are often portrayed as victims of avaricious oil and gas drillers and pipeline companies, who despoil the prairie with little thought for sacred sites.

In fact, tribes are some of the largest petroleum developers in the United States and are pressing the federal government for more control over drilling on their own territory.

The tribes should be ideally placed to benefit from the horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing techniques that have revolutionised production across the United States.

Instead, much of the development has taken place around them on privately owned and state property as drillers try to avoid the cost, complexity and delays of trying to obtain permission to drill from the federal overseers of Indian lands."

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John Kemp: Tribes call for faster drilling on Indian lands: (Reuters 2/5)