Mineral Revenues

Shortcomings in Onshore Federal Oil and Gas Production Verification Gao ID: RCED-90-99 June 26, 1990

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO evaluated the Department of the Interior's inspection and enforcement program responsibility for onshore federal and Indian oil and gas lease production verification.

GAO found that: (1) while the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has improved the inspection and enforcement program since assuming responsibility for it, allegations of oil and gas theft continue; (2) since 1986, BLM has conducted production verification inspections on less than 3 percent of the 15,000 federal and Indian leases; (3) BLM relies on its checklist inspections to identify potential production underreporting; (4) BLM oversight and implementation of its inspection and enforcement is inadequate and inconsistent; (5) there were variances in BLM supervisory controls, staff levels, use of production verification inspections, enforcement actions, and the certification program; (6) BLM has not evaluated the inspection and enforcement program since January 1987; (7) BLM expects state offices to formally review and evaluate their field offices, but not all offices conducted such reviews; (8) there were many inaccuracies in the program inspection data which limited the data's usefulness; (9) program enforcement data were incomplete; and (10) data inaccuracies have occurred in part because there is little central guidance and control on certain program procedures.

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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