The Bureau of Indian Affairs may have made some cuts in this year's budget request, but the agency plans to maintain funding levels for energy development on tribal lands, officials said yesterday.

The agency's fiscal 2013 budget request is $2.5 billion, $4.6 million less than the enacted level for fiscal 2012.

The request provides $8.5 million for energy development on tribal lands -- $6 million for renewable energy projects and $2.5 million for conventional energy -- as a part of the Interior Department's New Energy Frontier Initiative. The plan is for BIA to assist tribes in exploring and developing 1.8 million acres of active and potential energy sources on tribal land.

At a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing for BIA's budget request yesterday, Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.) said there was "enormous potential" for renewable energy development on reservations.

"Wind, solar energy, hydroelectric -- all are very abundantly available," he said at the Interior, Environment and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee hearing. "Tribal lands alone, as I understand it, have enough renewable energy potential to far exceed the Interior Department's goal of creating 11,000 megawatts by the end of 2013."

Energy development on tribal lands has recently been an issue on Capitol Hill. On the House side, Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) is pushing forward a bill that would cut down federal regulations on tribal lands. Also, the Senate Indian Affairs Committee held a hearing earlier this month to discuss challenges facing American Indian communities as they try to create energy projects.

The BIA budget request also includes $15.4 million to be used for trust land management. The federal government holds 56 million surface acres of land and 57 million acres of subsurface mineral estates in trust for tribes and individuals.

Some of this funding will go to developing reservation fishing programs, landscape conservation, management of invasive species and forest maintenance.