Despite Improvements in Managing Oil and Gas Permitting on Federal Lands, the Government Accountability Office Finds Shortcomings in the Bureau of Land Management’s Data Application and Inspection Processes

摘要

Although the Department of the Interior’s (DOI’s) Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has taken actions to improve its oil and gas permitting on federal lands, the agency needs to improve its data management in order to better track permit processing times, to identify oil and gas wells that pose the greatest environmental risks to prioritize inspections, and to keep an accurate inspection history of the wells, the GAO concluded in an audit report, Oil And Gas Development: BLM Needs Better Data To Track Permit Processing Times And Prioritize Inspections. Earlier this year, BLM acknowledged that it had been unable to consistently process completed applications for permit to drill (APDs) within the 30-day deadline as required by law. In its audit, GAO found that BLM’s central oil and gas database was missing certain data needed to actually assess compliance with the 30-day deadline, and that the database contained other inaccurate APD processing data.