Interior fines BP for filing false onshore drilling reports
Officials say company willfully filed erroneous reports related to operations on tribal lands in southern Colorado.
As BP and federal regulators continue to grapple with the company's disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the oil giant is facing new problems onshore. On Wednesday, Interior Department officials slapped the energy giant with a $5.2 million fine for repeatedly filing false onshore drilling reports related to the company's operations on tribal lands in southern Colorado.
According to a statement from the department's new Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, problems with BP's reporting were first discovered by Southern Ute Tribal auditors in 2007 after BP reported incorrect royalty rates and prices, and misattributed production from leased wells. The tribe's audit was conducted under a cooperative agreement with the Minerals Revenue Management Program, now part of BOEMRE.
After auditors notified the company about the errors, company officials promised to correct them, attributing the mistakes to problems with their automated files. But subsequent reviews by tribal and Interior auditors found the company continued to file reports with errors, "leading us to conclude that BP's continued submission of erroneous reports was knowing or willful," said Michael Bromwich, BOEMRE director.
The company can challenge the penalty through Interior's hearing procedure.