Reviewing its nearly five years of weekly natural gas storagesurveys, the American Gas Assoc. (AGA) said its numbers generallyhave tracked the more rigorously compiled monthly surveys by theEnergy Information Administration (EIA) and the AGA survey hasbecome an industry standard.

The status report issued by the AGA last week detailed itsmethodology and included a complete listing of data from weeklyreports from Jan. 5, 1994 through July 24, 1998. AGA said despitethe fact it polls less than half the number of companies that EIAsurveys, for 41 of the 55 months covered by the report itsmonth-end estimates of working gas in storage have been less than10% different than numbers tallied by EIA. Chris McGill, AGA’sdirector of gas supply statistics, said the survey covers 84% ofthe potential storage universe so that on average AGA statisticiansonly estimate about 16% of the total storage figure.

According to an AGA comparison, this year from May through Julyhas been the highest storage inventory for that period in the lastfive years, running slightly above the years 1994 and 1995 and muchhigher than storage levels in 1996 and 1997.

AGA offers some pertinent storage facts: the lowest recordednational working gas inventory was 546 Bcf for the week endingApril 12, 1996; the highest inventory entering the winter heatingseason was 3,099 Bcf for the week ending Nov. 11, 1994; the lowestlevel entering a winter heating season during the past five yearswas 2,725 in November 1996; the largest weekly net drawdown – 262Bcf-occurred in January 1997; the largest net weekly refill – 120Bcf-occurred in June 1994.

The AGA said its estimate of “full” working gas storage hasremained around 3.2 Tcf for the life of the survey.

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