Washington (Platts)--3Apr2012/212 pm EDT/1812 GMT

The US House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee subpoenaed the Obama administration Tuesday for documents related to the temporary ban on deepwater oil and natural gas drilling the White House instituted following the 2010 Macondo blowout.

Committee Chairman Doc Hastings, Republican-Washington, and other Republicans allege the White House edited a key report to make it appear that a group of independent engineering experts officially endorsed the administration's decision to temporarily ban deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico after the BP oil spill. The White House later turned over documents acknowledging that the engineers did not endorse the moratorium, but the GOP has not been satisfied with that response.

"The report falsely stated the professional views of independent engineers and the moratorium directly caused thousands of lost jobs, economic pain throughout the Gulf region, and a decline in American energy production," Hastings said in a statement Tuesday.

The subpoena requests documents related to the report that were created, sent or received by DOI Counsel to Secretary Steve Black; Neal Kemkar, a deputy associate director at the White House Council on Environmental Quality; Mary Katherine Ishee, a senior adviser at the Office of Surface Mining; David Hayes, the deputy secretary of the Interior; and Ted Strickland, who served as DOI chief of staff at the time.

The committee requested the documents by April 10.

The committee voted along party lines last week to give Hastings the authority to issue the subpoena.

If the officials do not comply with the subpoena they can be held in contempt of Congress, which would then be referred to the US Attorney for the District of Columbia to enforce. In the past, however, most recently in 2008, the US Attorney declined to pursue contempt charges against Bush administration officials after the officials claimed executive privilege to ignore the subpoenas.

Also last week, the committee voted to give Hastings authority to subpoena more than 30 hours of audio recordings between DOI officials related to a rule designed to protect streams from coal-mining residue.

Hastings did not issue that subpoena Tuesday, but he is prepared to do so "in short order," if DOI does not comply, committee spokesman Spencer Pederson said in an interview.

--Keith Chu, keith_chu@platts.com

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