Information on the Department of Energy's budgets for enforcing its petroleum allocation and pricing regulations and its process for distributing oil company overcharge refunds

Technical Report · Wed Apr 11 04:00:00 EST 1984

OSTI ID:6553408

The General Accounting Office conducted a review of the Economic Regulatory Administration's (ERA's) budget for enforcing the Department of Energy's (DOE's) petroleum allocation and pricing regulations pursuant to the Emergency Petroleum Allocation Act of 1973. This letter describes this review and also includes information on the Office of Hearings and Appeals' (OHA's) fiscal years 1981 to 1984 budgets and DOE's process for resolving the cases involving funds collected from oil companies in settling alleged violations of DOE's petroleum allocation and pricing regulations. The findings are: (1) ERA has consistently set overly optimistic objectives for its compliance program that resulted in proposed budgets being understated; (2) OHA's fiscal year 1984 workload is greater than anticipated in its budget submission because of ERA's unanticipated referral of 453 oil companies' overcharge refund cases in October 1983 to OHA; and (3) DOE has made slow progress in resolving the cases involving funds collected from oil companies because of higher priority work, the complexity of these oil companies' overcharge refund cases, and ERA's late referral of 453 of these cases.

• Research Organization: General Accounting Office, Washington, DC (USA). Resources, Community and Economic Development Div.
• OSTI ID: 6553408
• Report Number(s): GAO/RCED-84-52; ON: TI84901532
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

02 PETROLEUM
021000* -- Petroleum-- Legislation & Regulations
ALLOCATIONS
BUDGETS
COMPLIANCE
EMERGENCY PETROLEUM ALLOCATION ACT
ENERGY SOURCES
FOSSIL FUELS
FUELS
INDUSTRIAL PLANTS
LAWS
NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
PETROLEUM
PETROLEUM REFINERIES
PRICING REGULATIONS
REGULATIONS
US DOE
US GAO
US ORGANIZATIONS
VIOLATIONS