It isn’t exactly news that the EPA is ramping up its NEI programs, with one of the core focuses being the Energy Extraction Enforcement Initiative and “Next Generation Compliance”. Over just a few years it more than doubled inspections and evaluations with over 150 enforcement actions as a result.
One of the most recent enforcement actions was against Noble energy earlier this year, who agreed to a $73 million settlement to resolve claims brought by the EPA and the State of Colorado. According to the EPA, “the settlement resolves claims that [the company] failed to adequately design, size, operate and maintain vapor control systems on its controlled condensate storage tanks.” (a) The settlement order falls in line with the EPA’s new focus on “Next Generation Compliance”.
What is “Next Generation Compliance”:
- Promulgation of regulations and permits that are easier to implement
- Promotion and use of advanced emissions/pollutant detection technology
- A move away from paper, shifting to electronic reporting
- Promotion of transparency by making information more accessible to the public
- Promote the development and use innovative enforcement approaches to achieve more widespread compliance – in other words, data analysis, and business intelligence.
In light of that definition, companies in the energy extraction space can get ahead of the curve by implementing an Integrated Risk and Compliance Management system like Predict360. Predict360 fills in many of the gaps that the EPA and state agencies are looking at upstream companies to address, specifically: electronic reporting, transparency or visibility across the organization both internally and publicly, and data analytics\predictive and proscriptive data analysis.
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