Commission takes input on fee hikes
Licensing, fee, fine and citation payments the Oklahoma Corporation Commission gets from businesses it regulates help support the various programs and services it provides.
Agency officials are frustrated, however, that Oklahoma’s Legislature has cut the commission’s general appropriations that also help pay for that work and forced it to use dollars from its revolving funds to try to make up the difference.
Consequently, they are proposing to boost numerous fees and to create some new ones in an effort to reduce the agency’s reliance on general revenues in the future.
The proposals were presented by the commission’s staff during a hearing Tuesday.
If the commission were to adopt the changes, and if they were approved by the Legislature and governor, they wouldn’t take effect before July 1, 2019.
Generally, the proposals seek to adjust fees related to the commission’s licensing, permitting and oversight activities involving petroleum storage tanks, commercial transportation and oil and gas operations.
If all were adopted, commission officials estimate they would generate an additional $13.7 million in annual funding.
The commission’s $57.8 million budget for the current year includes only about $7.8 million of general revenue. More than $25 million comes from fees, assessments, fines and citations. The remainder is provided through apportioned revenues, some federal dollars and $11.4 million in money the commission used from its revolving funds to pay for ongoing operations.
A.J. Ferate, the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association’s vice president of regulatory affairs, told the panel that the association’s board doesn’t believe its companies should be required to pay for all of the commission’s oil and gas oversight activities.
Ferate said oil and gas companies provide Oklahoma with about 25 percent of its annual revenue, and said the Legislature should use some of that money to fund corporation commission operations.
“If it isn’t doing that, that’s on the Legislature, and it shouldn’t be thrown back upon the oil and gas industry,” he said.
Howard Ground, regulatory and environmental affairs consultant for the Oklahoma Oil and Gas Association, expressed similar concerns.
But Commission Chairman Dana Murphy said
the agency no longer has the resources it needs to continue to foster development of Oklahoma’s oil and gas resources.
At the presentation, officials said the agency’s general revenue appropriations had been cut by lawmakers by about $14 million the past four years, forcing the agency to shift about $9.6 million away from its revolving funds and the programs they pay for to keep ongoing operations stable.
Murphy also said the agency has more responsibilities than ever, citing
today’s much more technically challenging oil and gas drilling and production activities and the agency’s mandate to bolster its injection monitoring activities and to regulate induced seismicity issues.
“It’s not like we are asking for fee increases just because we haven’t made any for a number of years,” Murphy said. “Because of budget cuts we have had the past four years, this is where we find ourselves now.”
Murphy said she’s proud of the commission’s staff and its work, “but it has been very difficult to do when our jurisdiction has continued to expand, but the funding has not.”