Assuring Compliance

We target compliance and enforcement activities to ensure compliance with laws and regulations, with an emphasis on correcting violations with significant potential harm to human health and the environment. In addition to self-directed investigations, we receive thousands of leads and incident reports relating to oil and natural gas activities that could impact human health and air or water quality. We work with state and local governments to respond to incidents, encourage diligent accident prevention, and provide effective and prompt responses when emergencies occur.  Our offices around the nation ("Regions" or "Regional offices") provide guidance and grants to state regulators, perform inspections, conduct enforcement actions, and issue permits and information request letters, in order to ensure that existing federal laws are consistently and effectively implemented.

In March 2019, EPA announced a voluntary disclosure program for new owners of upstream oil and natural gas exploration and facilities. The program was developed to encourage new owners of these facilities to participate because it provided regulatory certainty and clearly defined civil penalty mitigation beyond what was offered by the EPA’s existing self-disclosure policies. Learn more about EPA's Audit Policy. In December 2019, EPA temporarily expanded its voluntary self-audit and disclosure program for upstream oil and natural gas facilities by giving existing owners the opportunity to find, correct, and self-disclose Clean Air Act violations. Learn more about the Existing Owner Audit Program for oil and natural gas production facilities.

The EPA's compliance assistance web portal for owners and operators of crude oil and natural gas extraction operations provides easily accessible information to help companies comply with federal and state environmental regulations. View the Environmental Compliance Information for Energy Extraction Portal at www.eciee.org.