This week, Congress’ independent investigative and auditing agency, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report criticizing the Department of the Interior’s (DOI’s) data systems for managing oil and gas development on federal lands. The GAO did not study the accessibility and reliability of DOI data for public users, which badly needs improvement. But the GAO found plenty to critique in DOI’s aging and inconsistent data systems, underscoring the need to overhaul the federal oil and gas program to better manage taxpayer-owned resources and generate return of their development.

The report out this week focuses on the three key data systems for managing oil and natural gas development on federal land. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) uses the Automated Fluid Minerals Support System (AFMSS) to gather and track data on all oil and gas wells drilled on federal land. The BLM uses the Legacy Rehost 2000 (LR2000) to keep tabs on all leases of federal land for oil and gas development (among other leases for coal, solar, etc.). Finally, the Office of Natural Resources Revenue (ONRR) uses the Minerals Revenue Management Support System (MRMSS) for reporting of data on oil and gas production on federal leases as well as assessing how much operators owe taxpayers for those leases and production.

The GAO found that all three systems are, to varying degrees: old, inconsistent, and uncommunicative with the other systems. Further, the agencies’ management of the systems often fails to comply with data standards and best practices, as does their development of replacement systems. Taxpayers for Common Sense has pointed to shortcoming in BLM’s data, particularly in the LR2000, for years. TCS highlighted improving data and public access to it as one of the top four point six things the DOI needed to work on in the 46^th administration and reiterated our concerns in comments on the DOI’s ongoing review of the federal oil and gas program.

The GAO report is replete with examples of the data systems failings, but certain items stand out. TCS staff are apparently not the only users to recognize the LR2000’s unreliability and limitations: “BLM state and field staff said they do not trust that the data in AFMSS are for the correct well or that documents attached to the well files in LR2000 are correct,” (emphasis added). As a result, federal employees often look at better data collected by state regulatory agencies.

Also, the data in one of the three systems often disagrees with the others: “In 2019, [the GAO] identified that 20 percent of the wells in AFMSS did not have a matching bond number in LR2000.” Additionally, the DOI’s Office of Inspector General “found that 40 percent of wells in AFMSS had a different status compared with the same wells in MRMSS.”

The data in the systems is often unreliable and inconsistent because of the limited ability to share data between systems. Instead of automatically transferring data from one system to another, staff in BLM or ONRR offices often rely on manual workarounds and manual data entry. This carries a huge cost. The GAO estimates that ONNR “uses over 22,750 hours of ONRR staff time – approximately 10 full-time employees – annually,” just converting and correcting data between systems.

Efforts to improve the systems don’t offer much hope. According to the report, the agencies are not building the new, replacement data systems to communicate with each other, and have been severely delayed implementing them after spending tens of millions of dollars. Apparently, BLM has been working on a replacement to the LR2000 since 2012 and has spent $17 million dollars on the project but the project is still in the “early stages of development.”

Taxpayers deserve strategic, smart management of valuable federal resources. The latest report is another indication we’re not getting what we’re due.