Cost Effective Regulatory Approaches to Enhance Domestic Oil and Gas Production and Ensure the Protection of the Environment. (Report for October 1, 2001-September 30, 2004.)

摘要

The Ground Water Protection Research Foundation (GWPRF) has developed the Risk Based Data Management System (RBDMS) for use by regulatory agencies. These agencies use this comprehensive system to manage oil and gas production and injection related activities. This system allows agencies to: improve regulatory decision-making; make oil and gas information more readily available to industry; increase environmental compliance; and reduce the regulatory barriers to oil and gas production. Twenty states and one Indian Nation are now using RBDMS with more states scheduled to install this system in 2003-4. Making the wealth of information contained in these compatible databases available creates an unparalleled opportunity for industry to improve exploration activities and increase production while improving environmental compliance. Attributes of RBDMS include its continued usefulness in assessing and reducing risk to drinking water, its use of nonproprietary software, its capability to address legacy databases, and its adaptation to variations in state oil and gas regulatory and production accounting methods. GWPRF's 'Cost Effective Regulatory Approach' (CERA) is an integral part of the RBDMS system. These effective and more efficient policies and environmental program improvements developed through CERA can be implemented by all States. The principal project objectives of this grant are to continue implementing RBDMS Phase II, make these data available to industry, streamline permitting on state and federal lands, reduce the cost of environmental compliance, and develop user-friendly on-line reporting techniques. The historic focus of this project has benefited the state oil and gas agencies by improving their environmental compliance and oversight has been a value to the industry by decreasing permit approval time. One major product has been the development of a translation utility that allows much better access to state held data by the industry. The more readily available well and related geographic data have a direct effect of decreasing exploration and production costs.