Energy Regulation

In response to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Department of Energy's (DOE) development and implementation of the Economic Regulatory Administration's (ERA) rule amending the recordkeeping requirements for the oil industry to determine whether DOE: (1) risked the loss of records needed to resolve alleged violations by issuing the rule in January 1985; and (2) had an adequate basis for selecting June 30, 1985, as the cut-off date for certain firms to retain their records. GAO also reviewed one oil producer's efforts to have DOE significantly reduce the oil industry's recordkeeping burden, specifically whether correspondence between executive branch officials and DOE should have been included in the public file.

GAO found that: (1) DOE issued its amended rule in January 1985 because it mistakenly believed that it would subsequently have difficulty enforcing its recordkeeping requirements; (2) since DOE failed to document and coordinate the actions it took to identify which oil firms should retain records and which records they should retain, some firms may have destroyed records needed for enforcement proceedings; (3) DOE unrealistically selected the June 30, 1985, cut-off date for certain firms to retain their records before it had completed its enforcement program; (4) it could not determine to what extent the oil producer's correspondence influenced the rulemaking process; and (5) the correspondence between the executive branch and DOE was not required to be part of the public file, since it did not directly respond to ongoing DOE rulemaking or a DOE request for approval of the recordkeeping requirement.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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