At Weatherford, we take environmental compliance very seriously. In 2017, we launched a global Environmental Permit Management system which is designed to ensure any environmental permit, license, authorization, or consent is tracked, monitored, and communicated. In 2018, we will be strengthening our regulatory compliance auditing process and increasing compliance auditing frequency.
In 2017, we recorded only 16 Notices of Violation (NOV) with a total just over $5,000 USD in fines. This is an 11% reduction in NOVs received from 2016.
All of our QHSSE standards, including the Global Environmental Standards, were created to encompass common regulatory requirements across the countries in which we operate, especially those in the USA, Canada, European Union and the United Kingdom. OEPS is also designed to comply with all major International Standards including ISO 14001, 9001, 18001 and API Q1 and Q2.
In addition, some of our facilities opt to gain external certification of their Environmental (as well as Quality and Health and Safety processes), and therefore over 19% of our facilities are certified to ISO14001. Many of the certifications are multiple certifications, encompassing ISO 9001 and ISO 18001, and often the certifications are for multiple product lines within a location or a country.
We routinely check to ensure quality is being delivered through monitoring practices such as the Verification Program. This program enables our leadership to use our Verified App to independently audit strategic locations to ensure OEPS implementation progress is at the desired level. We also conduct full OEPS audits on select facilities in every region each year to ensure that our implementation has been done correctly and is being used in practice.
In 2017, a total of 18 full OEPS Verification Audits focused on the implementation of the Environmental Standards. These full verification audits supported 85 audits performed via the Verification Program.