The Director of Administration at the Oklahoma Corporation Commission says he plans to ask for forensic audits by three other state and federal agencies including the OSBI, of the commission’s Petroleum Storage Tank Division after finding an unsettling element in its financial operations.
Jim Marshall wants to call in the OSBI, the State Auditor and the EPA to make sure there was no wrongdoing. The Petroleum Storage Tank Division (PSTD) enforces state and federal regulations which pertain to storage tanks.
He informed the commissioners at a recent meeting that as part of his emphasizing more transparency in the agency and a financial reorganization of the agency and its PSTD and other divisions, he made a discovery in the PSTD’s bookkeeping—a “unique feature.”
“The unique feature was described to me as a double delete. I’ve not heard of that before, but it was characterized as once you delete a file where the file was stored, not eliminated, that delete can take place, therefore effectively electronically shredding a government document. So once I became aware of that, that rose the level of need to act more quickly generated the condensed time frame,” said Marshall at the August 6 meeting of the commission.
The meeting and the discussion of the reorganizational effort also revealed some disorder and unrest over what Marshall proposed to accomplish.
The “double delete” was found in the PSTD’s internal database and tracking program known as Petroleum Information Management System or PIMS. It is used by the division to manage facility data, track underground and aboveground storage tanks, and monitor environmental release cases and state fund budgets. Marshall said the “double delete” was in the system since 2005 and that “it’s entirely possible that 21 years of perfect audit might have contained or lack of information was deleted.” Marshall said he cannot prove such a claim.
“But what I would suggest, and we don’t know if anybody ever exercised the double delete, I can’t assert that. I don’t know. I do know, it’s been reported to me, that it does exist,” he stated, adding that at the conclusion of the meeting he would be communicating to Region 6 of the Environmental Protection Agency that the feature exists and ask the agency to conduct an IT forensic audit. He also planned to contact the State Auditor’s Inspector’s office and notifying it “there’s a feature that was baked into this program that allows for the double delete so that they’re aware of it.”
“Lastly,” he said, “I will be contacting the OSBI to let them know that this feature does exist and ask that they conduct a forensic audit.”
Forensic audits are normally carried out as a deep and careful check of money records to find where there was fraud, theft or broken rules. Marshall went on to explain to the three state regulators the OSBI was going to be contacted because government documents are not supposed to be destroyed.
“I don’t know if any documents have been destroyed. Let me make that clear. But the availability, the technology does exist.”
The Director of Administration said he asked the agency’s Karl Griffith, Director of Special Projects and Chief Technology Officer to take immediate action to stop the privileges of the double delete that exist “so that we can stop that.”
As of August 14, Corporation Commission Communications Director Jack Damrill told OK Energy Today, “The Director is still preparing the report and once completed than it will be sent to the agencies listed in the meeting. The report will be available through open records request once completed.”
The revelation of Marshall’s finding came after Corporation Commissioner Todd Hiett raised questions about the status of Marshall’s reorganizational efforts and the impact on the PSTD’s Indemnity Fund, a fund used as an insurance fund for every tank owner in the state. Marshall’s efforts also resulted in some divisional turmoil in the administration of the Corporation Commission where the PSTD is protective of its regulatory power and some of its officers contend they were caught unaware of the reorganization.
Tarin Morris, the Indemnity Fund Administrator for the PSTD professed that financial records were not deleted from the PIMS database.
“These questions regarding the ethics and integrity of our division are tiresome. So I just wanted to make that clear. So again, I just want to make that clear. We are not deleting financial records from our database.”
Morris expressed her concerns that the reorganization could mean a diversion of money from the Indemnity Fund to other resources at the commission.
“So again, I am trying to protect the indemnity fund and ensure that there is not a diversion of funds because that, again, is going to affect our ongoing release cases and our job.”
The Commission’s Chief Financial Officer, Holly George, sitting next to Marshall at the meeting explained the impact of the discovery and the reorganizational effort.
“There’s a real divisional silo around this indemnity fund and I truly understand all of the statutory compliance issues and things of that nature. I have significant concerns when somebody can approve the checks, make edits and deletions in the system and reconcile the account and approve the reconciliation,” she explained.
The reorganizational effort was initiated by Marshall when he succeeded Brandy Wreath following Wreath’s dismissal last December.
“I want to start off by recognizing that when I was interviewed by you separately, the concept and the desire for transparency was contained in those discussions, and this is what we’re experiencing today, a transparent process, one open to the public, one open to my fellow co-workers here at the LCC, which I appreciate,” he informed commissioners.”
Marshall said he delivered an organization chart to each office in the agency that reflected the best structure as presented.
“And so all I’m asking for is that the standards of accountability, transparency be applied to PST,” adding, “This is not a reorganization that’s just affecting that one division. It’s affecting all divisions. We’re working closely with oil and gas.”
As for the unrest raised in the reorganizational efforts, Commissioner Hiett revealed it was the third such attempt to change things at the agency, recalling that he called a meeting in November 2025 to discuss proposed changes.
“My meeting was preempted by a previous administrator who called an exempt meeting with the commissioners and yelled and started making derogatory comments about several of our employees. It was a very contentious and ugly meeting, and I didn’t understand what the reason, why is this so contentious? This is just a discussion to find out answers to make sure we’re complying with the law.”
It was a month after the meeting when the Commission terminated Brandy Wreath as Administrator. To date, the commission has not given a public explanation about Wreath’s firing.
The reorganization proposed by Marshall had the support of Commission Chair Kim David who also referenced the November 2025 meeting and said the issue was not resolved then because of “the circumstances around that meeting.”
Addressing Marshall, she said, “So whatever we can do to help show to the public that we’re willing to take that extra step to become transparent, I think is extremely important. So I mean, I support the move. I don’t have any reason to not to.”
