IOGCC: A Stealth Lobbying Force for Oil & Gas Interests

Created nearly a century ago, the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, or IOGCC, bills itself as a “multi-state government agency” tasked with advocating for the “responsible” development of fossil fuels. In practice, however, the commission exists in a legal gray area that affords it the benefits of being a governmental body without the restrictions that typically come with that designation. And for decades, some of the largest oil & gas corporations in the United States have exploited this dynamic to turn the commission into a stealth lobbying force, one that has proven adept at laundering industry preferences into state and federal policy.

Experts have warned of industry influence on the quasi-governmental body since at least the 1970s, and internal IOGCC documents show the degree to which the oil & gas industry is now entwined with the commission. IOGCC does not publicly disclose its membership rolls or annual budget, but internal materials reveal that, as of 2021, more than a quarter of the commission’s members worked in the industry, while a sixth of its $1-million budget that year came from “sponsors”—a group that includes ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, and other oil giants.

With a mix of “states’ rights” advocacy and outright climate denial, IOGCC has helped the oil & gas industry skirt or outright avoid regulations designed to protect the public from hazardous waste and unsafe drinking water. In the 1970s and 80s, the commission worked to exempt oil & gas waste from the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), and in the 1990s and 2000s, it similarly helped exempt fracking from being subject to the Safe Drinking Water Act. Such industry-approved efforts continue today: The commission is currently fighting efforts to prevent the industry from offloading its cleanup responsibilities onto taxpayers, while also championing measures that would allow the industry to profit from carbon capture and storage.

Stealth Lobbying

Interstate compacts exist in a legal gray area within the U.S. federalist system since, by definition, such agreements deal with issues beyond the purview of a single state but that do not rise to the immediate responsibility of the federal government. However, IOGCC—which began as an agreement between six states and now includes 31—has used this inherent murkiness to its advantage, claiming governmental status when it benefits the commission, and disavowing that same status when it does not.

This inconsistency is evident in how IOGCC avoids transparency. The commission claims that as a government agency it does not lobby—even as it hires actual lobbyists—and is therefore exempt from the Lobbying Disclosure Act that applies to both nonprofit and for-profit entities alike. Meanwhile, the commission also claims that as a non-governmental agency it is exempt from both the Freedom of Information Act and the Oklahoma Open Records Act—even as its headquarters sits on Oklahoma state property and its website is hosted on an Oklahoma government domain.

The oil & gas industry has for decades used this dynamic to its advantage—something that has not gone unnoticed by experts. In 1978, when IOGCC’s congressional authorization was up for renewal, the Justice Department described the commission as “a platform for largely ‘political’ activity” and recommended against Congress reauthorizing it. “If so much of its activity should continue to be taken up with what is essentially lobbying work, it would seem inappropriate for it to have the special cachet of Congressional approval,” Donald Flexner, then-chief of the energy section of the Justice Department Antitrust Division, told a House committee. Despite these concerns, Congress permanently reauthorized IOGCC in 1979.

RCRA Exemption

Beginning in the late 1970s, IOGCC began lobbying to exempt oil & gas waste from the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA)—a landmark law enacted in 1976 that directs EPA to manage hazardous waste.

In 1979, IOGCC passed a formal resolution in support of the exemption and made its case directly to the president, the administrator of the EPA, lawmakers, and multiple governors. The effort found success the following year as Congress temporarily exempted “drilling fluids, produced waters, and other wastes associated with the exploration, development, or production of crude oil or natural gas” from EPA rules.

In an in-house history, the commission claimed credit for ensuring that the temporary exemption became permanent in 1988, writing that its “effort to preserve state regulation of drilling muds and produced waters, proved successful, thwarting yet another move to diminish state authority.”

IOGCC has since defended the RCRA exemption at every turn. As a result, trillions of tons of oil & gas waste have gone largely unregulated. In some states, drill cuttings disposed of in landfills have leached contaminants into the groundwater. In others, brine sprayed on roads for de-icing has contaminated waterways with radioactive materials and heavy metals.

Halliburton Loophole

One of IOGCC’s most significant wins came in 2005, when the organization’s efforts to exempt fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) paid off.

That effort began in 1999 when IOGCC backed a bill to exclude fracking from the SDWA’s definition of underground injection—even though fracking involves the underground injection of a high-pressure slurry of water, sand, and chemicals. While that bill failed, the provision was later included in the 2005 Energy Policy Act. Kevin Bliss, IOGCC’s D.C. representative at the time, told Inside Climate News that the commission was “pretty instrumental” in getting the carveout through Congress. IOGCC likewise congratulated itself in its in-house newsletter, writing that the legislation “includes the IOGCC’s proposal to resolve the hydraulic fracturing issue and brings several years of hard work by the Commission to fruition.”

Today, IOGCC and a non-profit called the Ground Water Protection Council co-run FracFocus, a database where frackers self-report chemicals used in fracking fluid. FracFocus was launched in 2011 as a voluntary tool; now, more than two dozen states require its use. But corporations often report incomplete data, arguing that their formulas are proprietary. Despite its inadequacies, the oil & gas industry has long used FracFocus as a shield against federal regulation, arguing that additional transparency requirements and regulations are unnecessary.

A History of Climate Denial

IOGCC and many of its members have a long history of climate denial and delay.

• 1998: IOGCC passed a resolution stating that “there is continuing scientific debate as to what the impact of increasing contributions of greenhouse gases would be on the climate” and urging caution in enacting policies to reduce emissions.

• 2002: IOGCC invited climate denier Bjørn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, to speak at its annual meeting and sign copies of his book.

• 2015: In response to questions from a DeSmog reporter, IOGCC wrote, “As an organization, the IOGCC does not have a position on climate change… The IOGCC is not part of conversations on climate change.”

• 2016: As reported by DeSmog, Bill Sydow, then Nebraska’s representative to IOGCC, told the audience at the commission’s annual business meeting, “I’m talking about climate change and global warming and I’m not a skeptic, I’m a denier.”

• 2018: Texas Railroad Commissioner Wayne Christian published an opinion piece in the Texas Tribune denying climate science. He wrote, “By bombarding us with sensationalist predictions of death and destruction, they [the mainstream media] make it seem like using oil and gas to drive our cars and heat our homes is bad.” He went on to state, “We don’t know whether man-made greenhouse gases are impacting our climate in a harmful way.” Two years later, Christian was named vice chairman of IOGCC.

• 2020: Jason Isaac gave a presentation to IOGCC’s public outreach committee on Life:Powered, a Texas Public Policy Foundation initiative that promotes fossil fuels and spreads disinformation about climate change.

• 2021: IOGCC member responses to a strategic planning survey included several examples of climate denial and delay. One member argued that IOGCC’s mission statement should include that the group “will strive to ensure that diverse viewpoints on climate related issues will also be heard.” Another wrote, “If I were to add anything, it would be to ensure the future of the industry by protecting states’ rights and fighting back against measures that seek to ‘keep it in the ground.’” Yet another commented, “I question whether it [the mission statement] represents the IOGCC’s decided shift to WOKEism & the shuttering of the upstream O&G industry.”

Orphaned wells

Languishing across the country are hundreds of thousands of orphaned wells—so named because there’s either no record of ownership or the last owner is no longer solvent. These wells pose a threat to the climate and public health because, left unplugged, they often leak methane and other volatile organic compounds into the atmosphere and contaminate land and groundwater with harmful substances, like arsenic, benzene, and salt.

The industry successfully convinced lawmakers that the best way to address orphaned wells is with large block grants, which are given to state regulators who then pay oil service companies for the actual plugging—effectively subsidizing the oil industry by allowing corporations to offload a pricey liability onto taxpayers.

IOGCC was integral to the industry push, which was ultimately incorporated into the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021. At the group’s annual conference in November of that year, Micah Chambers, legislative director for Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), credited IOGCC executive director Lori Wrotenbery for her help turning the industry preference into government policy. “There’s not many people that know this issue better than Lori, and the work that she did for us on the Hill, goes without saying, but it was incredibly helpful,” Chambers said.

Now that the Department of the Interior (DOI) has begun awarding over $4.2 billion in block grants, IOGCC is working behind the scenes to weaken federal oversight.

IOGCC knows that most state regulatory programs are flawed and inadequate. At a commission meeting in May 2023, Oklahoma Secretary of Energy Ken McQueen described his state’s orphaned-well problem as “a train coming down the tracks.” He added, “It strikes me that, as a state organization, if I'm ending up with 18,000 wells that it’s going to be my responsibility to plug, then probably my regulatory regimes are not what they should be in order to prevent that.”

A year later, IOGCC asked state regulators a series of questions on bonding rules, including: “We have seen wells passed from good operators to marginal operators, to poor operators. Is this a problem in your state? How do you control this flow?” The states’ responses were revealing.

• Louisiana: “Yes, this is the common life of a well.”

• West Virginia: “This is a problem in WV. We commonly enter into consent orders with the new operator before transferring wells. Unfortunately, this is not extremely successful.”

• Kentucky: “There has been seen some movement from larger, more stable operators to smaller less capitalized operators who focus less on BMPs [best management practices] and diligent compliance. However, as long as the incoming new operators meet the state bonding standards and regulatory requirements, we do not see a solution to control that shift.”

Despite being well aware of flaws within state regulatory programs, IOGCC has fought attempts to incentivize states to strengthen their programs. For example, in October 2023, DOI requested input from stakeholders on how to award grants to states that have strengthened their plugging standards or updated their programs to reduce the number of wells orphaned in the future. In response, IOGCC wrote [emphasis added]: “IOGCC worked with other stakeholders to draft the language codified in [the law amended by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law]. At IOGCC’s request, the drafters included the phrase ‘designed to’ in both subclauses to avoid the implication that a state would have to prove that the regulatory improvement achieved the intended result… A state need only show that the regulatory improvements are designed to achieve the intended result to qualify for a grant.”

In other comments, IOGCC argued that DOI should not require states to prioritize orphaned wells based on public health and safety concerns or methane emissions. It likewise rejected the idea that states should be required to check for methane leaks and water contamination before and after plugging.

DOI ignored most of IOGCC’s suggestions related to prioritization and monitoring, but the commission is now supporting the Orphan Well Grant Flexibility Act. This bill would explicitly forbid DOI from requiring states to measure methane emissions or prioritize orphaned wells based on factors such as public health and safety, potential environmental harm, and other land use priorities.