U.S. EPA Announces New “Strategic Civil-Criminal Enforcement Policy”
On April 17, 2024, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published its “Strategic Civil-Criminal Enforcement Policy,” a landmark new internal enforcement policy for its civil and criminal enforcement offices (the Policy) that signals a paradigm shift in how the agency will assess, coordinate, and prosecute civil (including administrative) and criminal environmental enforcement. In the Policy, EPA states that it has already started increasing communication and collaboration between its enforcement offices in recent years, which EPA believes has led to better case screening and more consistent enforcement responses across regions. But the Policy goes far beyond those less formal efforts and reflects EPA’s stated goal to continue toward an integrated approach, moving away from its prior, more bifurcated approach to civil and criminal enforcement.
2022 Sidley Energy Enforcement Update
This Sidley Energy Enforcement update covers:
- Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approves settlement between Enforcement staff and Coaltrain
- Both FERC and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) enforcement reports highlight the respective agency’s continued commitment to strong enforcement
- U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upholds FERC’s finding that BP manipulated the natural gas market but remands to FERC to recalculate its $20 million penalty
- CFTC orders Glencore to pay a record-setting penalty of $1.186 billion
- CFTC and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) orders over $1.8 billion in fines against 11 firms for recordkeeping failure — employees using unapproved method of communications such as texts and WhatsApp on personal devices
