About Us

Program Overview

Mission Statment

The Utah Oil and Gas Program within the Division of Oil, Gas, and Mining:

  • Promotes the exploration, development, and conservation of oil and gas resources
  • Fosters a fair economic return to the general public for those resources
  • Maintains sound, regulatory oversight to ensure environmentally acceptable activities

Responsibilities

By legislative mandate, the Oil and Gas Program of the Utah Division of Oil, Gas, and Mining has oversight responsibility for the following:

  • All operations for and related to the production of oil or natural gas including:
    • drilling, testing, equipping, completing, operating, producing, and plugging of wells, and reclamation of sites
  • The spacing and location of wells
  • Operations to increase ultimate recovery, such as:
    • cycling of natural gas
    • the maintenance of pressure and introduction of natural gas, water, or other substances into a reservoir
  • The disposal of salt water and oil-field wastes
  • The underground and surface storage of oil, natural gas, or products
  • The flaring of natural gas from an oil well

Oil & Gas Emergencies

During office hours, call Oil and Gas Field Operations at 801-538-5296. After office hours, call Primary:801-386-3902 or Secondary: 385-272-4637.

After calling, please submit a report within 5 days of the event using the Incident Report eForm. NOTE: Operators using the Incident Report eForm may now amend existing reports previously entered into the system. Original reports should be amended when corrections are needed, rather than creating new reports for the same event.

Definitions of Major Events:

  • Unauthorized release of more than 25 barrels of oil, salt water, oil field chemicals, or oil field wastes.
  • Unauthorized flaring, venting, or wasting of
    • More than 500 Mcf of natural gas at any drilling or producing well site, or at any injection or disposal facility
    • More than 1500 Mcf of natural gas at any transportation, gathering, or processing facility
  • Any fire which consumes the volumes shown above
  • Any spill, venting, or fire, regardless of the volume involved, which occurs in a sensitive area, e.g., parks, recreation sites, wildlife refuges, lakes, reservoirs, streams, urban or suburban areas
  • Each accident which involves a fatal injury
  • Each blowout; loss of control of a well
  • Each release of natural gas containing 100 or more parts per million of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) that is not controlled

Rules

The division shall be notified of major or minor reportable events occurring at any oil or gas drilling, producing, transportation, gathering or processing facility, or at any injection or disposal facility.

Rule Reference: Rule R649-3-32 Incident Reporting (links to the Office of Administrative Rules website, you will need to search for the rule.)

Roles of the Division of Oil, Gas, and Mining

The division's Oil and Gas Program -- so far as possible -- will perform the following roles for the types of events described below:

  • Be a central gathering point of information.
  • Provide short-term guidance to operators and citizens
  • Provide long-term oversight to assure that remediation of the incident is accomplished

The division does not provide emergency response for these types of incidents.