Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission

{{#badges: FrackSwarm|Navbar-fracking}} The Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, or (IOGCC), is a quasi-governmental organization based in Oklahoma City located on property adjacent to the Governor's Mansion and on Oklahoma state property. The IOGCC is focused on oil and gas regulations, these days mostly centering around the issue of hydraulic fracturing, and is made up of appointees selected by the governors of the 38 oil and gas producing states, plus eight Canadian provinces and three countries as international affiliates. Governors generally appoint high-level regulators to participate.

In 1991 at the dawn of the fracking boom, the commission changed its name from the Interstate Oil Compact Commission (IOCC) to the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission (IOGCC). It was founded as the Interstate Compact to Conserve Oil and Gas.

As commonly advertised, IOGCC’s membership base generally consists of top-ranking officials at state-level regulatory agencies. In reality, IOGCC’s membership roster is dominated in the majority by lobbyists and executives, and these members are appointed by the Governors of member states. Some of those appointees are even lobbyists and/or industry attorneys.

Today, IOGCC is best known for running the voluntary FracFocus database for disclosure of chemicals injected into the ground during fracking, doing so alongside the fellow Oklahoma City-based Groundwater Protection Council (GWPC). FracFocus – which IOGCC admitted in a presentation can serve as important public relations tool for the oil and gas industry – has come under fire by media and academia for its actual lack of transparency. FracFocus is linked to industry public relations firm Brothers and Company which registered the website and lists IOGCC as one of its clients alongside Chesapeake Energy, America’s Natural Gas Alliance and Devon Energy.

Prominent Members

Ron Ness - Head of North Dakota Petroleum Council, Public Outreach Committee

Harold Hamm – Continental Resources CEO and Founder, Legal and Regulatory Affairs Committee

Ryan Bernstein – Legal Counsel and Chief-of-Staff for U.S. Sen. and former IOGCC chairman John Hoeven (R-ND); Legal and Regulatory Affairs Committee

Tom Price – Former senior vice president of corporate development and government relations of Chesapeake Energy, Public Outreach Committee

Nancy Johnson – U.S. Department of Energy, Director of Environmental Science and Policy Analysis

Roger Kelley – Continental Resources, Legal and Regulatory Affairs Committee

Evan Olson – Legal counsel for ExxonMobil, Legal and Regulatory Affairs Committee

Lindsey Dingmore – XTO Energy, Legal and Regulatory Affairs Committee

Scott Anderson – Environmental Defense Fund, Legal and Regulatory Affairs Committee

Ronald C.Schultz,Jr. – ConocoPhillips, Legal and Regulatory Affairs Committee

Santana Gonzalez, Jr. - Now-retired lobbyist for Chevron in Texas, Environmental and Safety Committee

Marc Bond – Former legal counsel for Chevron, now legal counsel with Hillcorp

Recent IOGCC Chairs

2016 - Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin

2015 - Utah Gov. Gary Herbert

2014 - Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant

2013 - Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley

2012 - Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell

2011 - Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin 
 2010 - Texas Gov. Rick Perry

2009 - Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry


2008 - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin

2007 - North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven

2006 - Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal

2005 - Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski

2004 - New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson

2003 - North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven

2002 - Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee

2001 - Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles

2000 - Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles

1999 - Kansas Gov. Bill Graves

1998 - Wyoming Gov. Jim Geringer

1997 - Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating

Overview

History

The Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission was created by an act of Congress in 1935 as a constitutionally-ordained compact via Article 1, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution. U.S. Congressman and Oklahoma Governor, E.W. Marland is considered IOGCC's founder. Marland, who owned several oil companies in his lifetime, also founded the US Oil and Gas Association, then called the Mid-Continent Association. The US Oil and Gas Association is a lobbying group that spent $204,000 lobbying the federal government on behalf of the oil and gas industry in 2015.

Though IOGCC is a compact, it often claims to be a government agency and is listed as such both on its own website, serves on several federal bodies as a government agency and is listed as an agency on the website of the Oklahoma government.

Despite this, IOGCC claims an exemption from both state- and federal-level open records law requests. Though the 1997 and 2005 versions of IOGCC’s bylaws had a provision saying that the public is entitled to records of IOGCC proceedings, the current leadership of IOGCC does not respond to such requests. Additionally, the current set of by-laws show that the IOGCC no longer lists an open records provision at all, meaning that according to its by-laws, two-thirds of IOGCC's membership would've had to have voted to strike that provision. IOGCC has claimed this exemption and altered its by-laws despite being located on property owned by the State of Oklahoma and transferred via a land deed by the State, situated on a parcel of land carved out for IOGCC next to the Governor’s Mansion.

Funding

The IOGCC is funded, in part, through an excise tax on petroleum and by contributions from various member states. Therefore, IOGCC funding increases with increased oil and gas production. Because the IOGCC does not report any information on its funding or budget, no one besides IOGCC itself knows how much of the Commission’s activities are funded directly by the oil and gas industry. A copy of the 2013 budget obtained through open records law from an IOGCC member state, though, reveals that a significant portion of the IOGCC’s budget comes from corporate donations to its biannual meetings.

IOGCC conferences and meetings are funded through sponsorships by the oil and gas industry. The 2015 annual conference that took place in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma was sponsored by some of the largest fracking companies, including Marathon Oil, the Canadian government, Schlumberger, Sandridge Energy, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, BP and XTO Energy. Further, the prominent funders of its Columbus, Ohio 2014 annual meeting included the likes of Marathon Oil, ExxonMobil subsidiary XTO Energy, Devon Energy, Enbridge, ConocoPhillips, BP.

Model Resolutions

IOGCC also its own IOGCC Model Resolutions and distributes them to member states, Congress, and executive agencies. Each model resolution, as an IOGCC general practice, has an accompanying "Action Plan" for what to do with the model in the public policy sphere. The model resolutions center around issue areas such as preventing and preempting federal regulations, anti-federal public lands advocacy, oil and gas wastes and waste injection, among other topics.

Like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the organization's membership base – in some cases actual industry representative members – proposes and passes the IOGCC Model Resolutions on the most pressing oil and gas-related regulatory issues of the day. These have run the gamut on policy areas ranging from public lands issues, safe and clean drinking water regulations, climate change issues, offshore drilling, and others.

Public Relations

According to its website, IOGCC “advocates for environmentally-sound ways to increase the supply of American energy.” The IOGCC website also offers a “Tips for effective activism” section, in which it instructs state regulators to be the “voice” of the IOGCC in public hearings and community meetings. “We’re your voice to Congress. Be ours in your state,” the sub-headline of that document reads.

IOGCC’s “voice” is shaped by oil and gas public relations firms like Brothers and Company, which give seminars to IOGCC’s member state regulators on messaging and how to deal with media. At the same time, PR firms like Brothers run advertising campaigns on behalf of the oil and gas industry.

That “voice” is also honed by IOGCC’s deputy director, Gerry Baker. Baker began his career as managing editor and state capitol bureau chief for the Oklahoma Business News Company, leaving in 1979 to do public relations work for the next 12 years for oil company Kerr-McGee Corporation. Anadarko Petroleum purchased Kerr-McGee as a wholly-owned subsidiary in 2006.

Thereafter, Baker “launched an independent consultancy – Corporate Consulting, Inc. – specializing in strategic communication planning and implementation for high profile clients,” reads his biography up on the Aspen Institute website. “In addition, he specialized in crisis communication management [and] Baker continues to provide these services for select clients.”

At the 1998 IOGCC annual meeting, Baker – while with Corporate Consulting, Inc. – gave a media training seminar. Corporate Consulting, Inc. was incorporated in Oklahoma in 1991 and got its most recent Certificate of Good Standing in July 2015. Baker began working for IOGCC in 2002 while the organization was pushing hard for the Halliburton Loophole's insertion into first the Energy Policy Act of 2003, then the Energy Policy Act of 2005. In 2011, Baker gave a talk at IOGCC’s annual meeting in on how to deal with the public's fear of fracking.

“When people do not get all of the information, or information is too technical, they begin to fill in the holes with what they can imagine,” he said in one of the early presentation slides. “The perceived risk, even if it isn’t a reality, makes hydraulic fracturing an emotional issue.”

The IOGCC, furthermore, has a tight-knit relationship with the industry-funded front group, public relations tool and lobbying group, Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA). CEA is an important part of the IOGCC’s 2013-launched States First Initiative, where they are listed as the only “ally.” An August 2014 version of the website has an "allies" section but no colleagues listed. CEA also wrote a “letter of support” for States First in March 2014.

In 2005, per a vote from its Public Outreach Committee, IOGCC published an 107-page "Communications Resource Guide."

"The development and dissemination of data and knowledge is essential to cultivating an understanding and appreciation of the energy challenges facing our states and nations," reads the Guide. "Today, many groups nationwide cite public image as a major barrier inhibiting the responsible recovery of American oil and natural gas resources. We have a rare opportunity to re-position ourselves from the largely defensive posture of the past quarter century, into a positive, proactive, forward-looking force."

IOGCC's Impacts

Halliburton Loophole or IOGCC Loophole?

Fracking and Groundwater Contamination

The IOGCC has been influential in downplaying safety concerns regarding hydraulic fracturing and groundwater contamination. The IOGCC released a survey of fracking wells in 2002 that found that there has been nearly 1 million wells had used fracking "with no documented harm to groundwater." This survey has been cited repeatedly since then and played a central role in the debate over the Energy Policy Act of 2005 in the years leading up to its passage. It has since been discovered that the IOGCC missed or looked the other way at real-life incidents of groundwater contamination due to the fracking process.

IOGCC commented on and exhibited the 2002 survey in a comment it made for the EPA’s proposed fracking of coalbed methane rules that came out in 2004. EPA whistleblower Wes Wilson spoke out about the EPA report being politicized and bad science. IOGCC understood the political importance of the report’s release, issuing a press statement on it in July 2004.

“We are pleased with EPA’s conclusion supporting the states’ position that the state programs have been effective in protecting groundwater sources,” said Christine Hansen , then-IOGCC executive director, in the release. “Environmental protection is an important goal of state oil and gas regulation, and the IOGCC is committed to ensuring this goal is met at all times in the exploration and production process.”

Loophole Lobbying

IOGCC has situated itself at the center of the issue of fracking's Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) of 1974 exemption since the first years after the bill passed in Congress and was proposed by President Richard Nixon and signed into law by President Gerald Ford. In 1976, IOGCC submitted comments to the EPA on its proposed regulations for underground injection control (UIC), doing so as one of the “interested parties” alongside the American Petroleum Institute. Its advocacy paid off: the 1980 Safe Drinking Water Act amendments delegated regulatory authority of the SDWA to the states.

IOGCC also spearheaded an advocacy campaign on the Legal Environmental Assistance Foundation (LEAF) v. EPA case that wove its way up to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. The 1997 U.S. Appeals Court ruling for that case said fracking was a form of underground injection and thus should be regulated by the EPA under the SDWA. IOGCC decried this decision in a press release, passed a resolution pertaining to it, had a subcommittee workgroup dealing with the LEAF case, and devoted an entire portion of its website to the case and its advocacy efforts around it.

In a subsequent U.S. Appeals Court case decided in 2001, IOGCC served as a legal intervenor alongside American Petroleum Institute, Halliburton and others. A document housed at Greenpeace USA’s anti-environmental archives shows that IOGCC formerly was a dues-paying member of API.

IOGCC also advocated for S. 724 of 1999 in a model resolution, which called for the SDWA enforcement exemption as applied to fracking. The Energy Policy Act of 2003 also contained the SDWA fracking regulatory loophole and then-IOGCC director John Hoeven called for its passage at a speech delivered at a 2003 IOGCC meeting.

IOGCC also played host to a 2002 conference promoting fracking from coal seams in West Virginia, doing so alongside the EPA and the Interstate Mining Compact Commission. At the conference, then-West Virginia Governor Bob Wise said that fracking natural gas from coal seams needed a rebranding.

“Because this is now an important part of the total U.S. energy mix, the industry needs to move away from using its confusing short-hand term, ‘coalbed methane,’” said Wise. “The public understands the term natural gas because they use it everyday.”

IOGCC’s second D.C. lobbyist Kevin Bliss – who maintained an office in D.C. – is credited in a September 2005 newsletter with helping to get industry exemption now known as the Halliburton Loophole inserted into the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Bliss has gone on the record to say there is no link between fracking and groundwater contamination.

So too is Bill Cooper, then a staffer for U.S. Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), who at the time served as counsel for the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce and who “became an advocate for the IOGCC’s original legislative solution.” Cooper attended IOGCC’s 2004 meeting in Oklahoma City while working for Barton and IOGCC paid his way. Sponsors of that meeting included BP, Chesapeake Energy, Devon Energy, Dominion Energy, Kerr-McGee (now Anadarko Petroleum), the Williams Company and others.

After the bill passed, IOGCC declared victory in a press release, too, saying that the “waiting game is over” in its headline.

"With strict, top-of-the-line state policies already in place, IOGCC member states stand ready to deliver these much-needed resources to consumers, with the utmost respect for our environment," Christine Hansen, then-IOGCC executive director, declared in the release.

IOGCC had earlier issued a press release when the bill passed through the Senate, too, with a headline saying that it lauds its passage.

In the years thereafter, IOGCC created a model resolution in 2009 to protect fracking's exemption from the SDWA in the aftermath of citizen and advocacy group concern over the drilling technique’s potential groundwater impacts, as well as introduction of the FRAC Act, which would have reversed the IOGCC-created loophole.

That resolution was picked up by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and adopted as one of its model bills, while passing in nine different states across the U.S. Akin to a lobbying firm, a document shows that IOGCC actually tracked the passage of the resolutions in those states. A close look at the language reveals word for word similarity between the nine state resolutions and the original IOGCC model.

In a February 26, 2009 hearing on the Utah version of the model resolution appearing as a “member of the public,” (starting at 33:25) Utah’s IOGCC representative John Baza cited the IOGCC as the progenitor of the bill and said the Utah version and the IOGCC version “pretty much mirror each other,” also saying there was no evidence of groundwater contamination from fracking. He spoke similarly as a member of the “public” at a February 13 hearing (starting at 4:50), saying the two resolutions are “essentially mirrors” and fracking can be done without “harm to groundwater situations.”

FracFocus

The IOGCC operates the FracFocus website alongside the Groundwater Protection Council. The website, funded by government grants and the oil and gas industry, is a self-disclosure site that companies use to report the types of chemicals and operations they employ during their fracking operations. It is seen by the industry as an alternative disclosure mechanism to what existed prior to that under the Halliburton Loophole.

FracFocus, however, has come under scrutiny for not effectively disclosing fracking operations. In a Harvard Law School study titled "Legal Fractures in Chemical Disclosure Laws," the authors found government and the public shouldn’t rely on FracFocus as a reporting tool. The Harvard study found FracFocus inadequate for three main reasons: It is hard to determine when and if companies make disclosures. The data contained within FracFocus isn’t vetted—it consists of whatever the company reports. Secrecy claims made by companies aren’t vetted—FracFocus allows for unchallenged and extremely broad disclosure exemptions made at the company’s discretion.

Influence Peddling

Lobbying Organ or Compact?

IOGCC members frequently testify in Congress about oil and gas regulatory issues. One of the commission's main goals is to stop federal regulation of the oil and gas industry, primarily by advocating a "states first" approach to rule-making. Through the IOGCC's States First Initiative, the Commission and the Groundwater Protection Council (GWPC), a closely related government funded non-profit, advocate against federal regulation of the oil and gas industry. To this end, IOGCC representatives often address federal lawmakers about the adequacy of current state regulations, and what they claim is needlessness of further federal regulation or study.

IOGCC also writes model resolutions and distributes them to member states, Congress, and executive agencies. Each model resolution, as an IOGCC general practice, has an accompanying "Action Plan" for what to do with the model in the public policy sphere. The model resolutions center around issue areas such as preventing and preempting federal regulations, anti-federal public lands advocacy, oil and gas wastes and waste injection, among other topics.