Pipeline regulations worry U.S. leaders

WASHINGTON, Feb. 10 (UPI) -- Companies drilling for oil and natural gas in the United States paid only a fraction of their overall profits for drilling violations, a panel found.

A report from Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee said oil and gas companies were fined by the U.S. Interior Department $274,000 for drilling violations from 1998-2011.

"(That's) a tiny amount in relationship to the huge profits oil and gas companies make from drilling on public lands," the report said.

The report said that more than 2,000 violations were handed out during the reporting period by the Interior Department. Of the 549 violations classified as major, more than half were related to non-functional blowout preventers.

A faulty blowout preventer was in part cited as one of the series of failures that led to the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. That disaster led to one of the worst offshore oil spills.

The report comes amid concerns over hydraulic fracturing, a process used to get natural gas out of shale deposits. The panel added that onshore oil production is on pace to increase in the United States, where it makes up for about 6 percent of the country's oil production.

The panel called on the Interior Department to revise its drilling and safety regulations to account for U.S. energy developments.