GWPC Releases Oil & Gas Forms Project

In the fall of 2017 the Ground Water Protection Council (GWPC) began a project to create a library of state oil and gas regulatory forms as well as an inventory of fields on some of the most common forms. The Forms Project was released this spring for use by GWPC and RBDMS partner states during development and updates of forms.

The goal of the Forms Project is to help agencies identify successful and efficient methodologies for regulating oil and gas used by different oil and gas agencies. The Forms Project does this by providing a centralized location for states to easily access, download, and compare forms from other states. This is useful when they are updating their forms.

Usually when states are implementing RBDMS eForm, they take the opportunity to update the data fields on the form. The Forms Project field inventory allows states to see which fields are most often used on particular forms by other states. They can use this information to ensure they are collecting the most important and useful information for groundwater and natural resource protection.

“When working on form updates in the past, I had to search through five or six other states’ websites and download their forms individually,” said GWPC Project Coordinator, Thom Kerr. “The Forms Project puts all of those resources in one place and even does some of the analysis for me. I can just download the field inventory spreadsheet and see which fields are collected by most states on their Application for Permit to Drill.”

The Forms Project currently holds the publicly-available forms from 29 states and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The field inventory contains data fields from 20 types of forms including Complaint Form, Incident Report, Remediation Plan, Notice of Violation, Application for Permit to Drill, and Pipeline Permit.

The Forms Project is not meant to be exhaustive or an official repository of state forms. It is not an alternative to state websites where the most recent versions of forms can be found. It is merely intended to make comparison of forms from different states easier and less time consuming. For access to the GWPC Forms Project, email Paul Jehn at paul@gwpc.org.