AUSTIN—Texas energy regulators, trying to cope with the biggest oil boom in decades, dipped into an environmental cleanup account Tuesday so they can whittle down a backlog of well permit requests and expand drilling.

The Texas Railroad Commission voted unanimously to tap up to $750,000 from the Oil Field Cleanup Fund, an account normally used to plug abandoned wells and remediate contaminated drilling sites. The money in the account comes largely from industry permit fees.

“We are in extraordinary times and they demand some extraordinary measures,” said Commissioner Victor Carrillo, a member of the three-member panel.

Industry advocates have been pushing the Railroad Commission, which once regulated railroads but now oversee the oil and gas industry, to seek emergency funds to reduce bureaucratic and costly delays in the permitting process.

Midland oilman Clayton Williams, who lost the 1990 governor’s race to Democrat Ann Richards, pressed the commission to spend as much as $3 million to immediately begin hiring more people to process permits and regulators who oversee activity in the booming Texas oil fields.

“You have less people and more work to do,” Williams said. “You need more money.”

The commission had planned to ask the Legislative Budget Board, or LBB, for the emergency funds. But Commission chairman Michael Williams said likely state budgetary demands from Hurricane Ike made it more logical to tap available resources within the agency.

He said well-plugging and other environmental projects would not suffer due to the emergency spending measure. Williams also said the commission would ask the Legislature to replenish the $750,000 early next year.

Officials expect to issue 29,000 permits this year, an increase of almost 50 percent from 2007. In 1985, there were 30,778 permits issued.

Oil industry advocates say they have grown increasingly frustrated with the long waits for government approval to explore for oil at a time of soaring energy prices. Processing times for regular drilling permits is averaging 40 days, up from a wait of 14-21 days in 2007. The delay for expedited permits has doubled to two weeks, up from about a week one year ago, according to agency figures.

The Railroad Commission has shed more than 100 employees in the last decade, going from 851 authorized full-time employees in 1999 to 706 today, agency figures show. Over the same period, the number of drilling permits issued has more than doubled, from 8,430 in 1999—a modern low—to 19,994 granted last year, according to state drilling statistics.

At the height of the last oil boom, in 1981, the commission issued 47,940 drilling permits. Drilling permits range from $200 to $300 per well depending on depth. It costs $150 extra for an expedited permit.