The U.S. Forest Service has ordered the Allegheny National Forest to redo the controversial oil and natural gas drilling sections of its new 10-year management plan, saying the plan fails to assess the cumulative effects of the drilling and does not comply with federal law.

The decision was hailed yesterday by environmental groups that contend that local U.S. Forest Service managers have failed to regulate the increased level of drilling in the state's only national forest.

"At long last the Washington office has told the local Allegheny Forest Service managers what should have been obvious all along -- the Forest Service not only can, but must, regulate oil and gas drilling in order to protect the national forest's surface resources," said Ryan Talbott, forest watch coordinator for the Allegheny Defense Project.

The U.S. Forest Service decision, dated Friday but posted on its Web site yesterday, states that it has co-authority with the state Department of Environmental Protection for regulating oil and gas activity, an authority that oil and gas producers disputed in their appeals of the forest plan.

The decision also found that the public was not given an opportunity to review and comment on the plan's final oil and gas development rules as required by federal law.

Steve Rhodes, president of the Pennsylvania Oil and Gas Association, said last night he could not comment on the decision because he hasn't reviewed it in detail, but acknowledged it will have a big impact.

He said the organization's long-standing position is that where private companies own the underground oil and gas reserves, they also have the right to access those reserves and "the Forest Service cannot deny us those rights."

The management plan, adopted a year ago, cost the U.S. Forest Service millions of dollars to develop and took more than five years to write. The decision settles 80 appeals filed about drilling in the forest by environmental groups, recreation groups, and the timber and oil and gas industries.

Well drilling, spurred by higher prices for both oil and gas, has ballooned in recent years. The 8,000 active wells in the 500,000-acre forest -- including more than 2,000 drilled last year -- total more than in all other national forests combined.

Drilling in the Allegheny National Forest is possible because the federal government, in 1923, bought surface rights for the forest land in Elk, Forest, McKean and Warren counties but not the underlying mineral rights. As a result, oil companies own the minerals under 95 percent of the forest.

The decision by Joel Holtrop, reviewing officer for the chief of the U.S. Forest Service, requires Allegheny National Forest administrators to suspend the oil and gas section of the management plan, reassess the local and regional air quality effects of the drilling, and give the public a chance to review and comment on any new proposed regulations.