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Managing regulatory compliance and risk

I wrote a few weeks ago about environmental regulations and how the difficulty of keeping up with these regulations can shut down business. Another article I read recently, called “Dealing with Regulatory Risk,” from the Oil and Gas Financial Journal, discussed the issue of regulation of fracing and LNG exports. The author, Don Stowers’ big point was that while regulation of these things serves a purpose and is important, over-regulating will have the effect of slowing down the economy and stalling job creation for the energy sector. Stowers also asked several important questions:

  • What is the legitimate role of government in regulating business?
  • Should federal, state or local officials do the regulating?
  • When does government regulation go too far, and who decides it?
  • When happens when excessive government regulation stifles business development and job creation?

Of course for most businesses, any regulation tends to be viewed as an obstacle, and as Stowers put, “an obstacle that needs to be dealtt with.” No matter whether we perceive these regulations to be going too far and to be bad for business, companies in the energy industry still need to examine their efforts to maintain compliance as far as is possible, as the stakes in fines or lawsuits can be very high.

If your company is involved in the energy industry, you should be asking a few questions

  • Do we have visibility into those areas where we might be out of compliance?
  • If so, would someone get a proactive alert to warn them of this?
  • Could the correct documents and records be produced if there was an issue?

If the answer is no to any of these questions, it may be time to invest in a solution that helps manage compliance. In this environment of increasingly complicated regulations, most companies can use all the help they can get!

See an example of what this solution might look like here

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