The American Public Gas Association (APGA) has called on the Energy Information Administration (EIA) to begin collecting and distributing “relevant and timely” natural gas production and consumption information on a regular basis to help temper the “extreme price swings” in the market.

“We believe that such information, if available on a timely basis, would achieve the twin goals of providing better transparency in the marketplace and effectively promoting stability in natural gas markets,” wrote APGA President Bob Cave in a letter Friday to EIA Acting Administrator Mary Jean Hutzler.

Specifically, the group of municipal distributors urged the Department of Energy (DOE) agency to “exercise its broad jurisdiction” under the Federal Energy Administration Act (FEAA) to “collect and disseminate” information pertaining to production, production capability, pipeline capacity, pipeline capacity utilization and end-use consumption by customer class. This “is not intended as an inclusive list of needed information, but rather as a starting point.”

By gathering this additional information, Cave believes the overriding significance that the gas industry currently attaches to the American Gas Association’s (AGA) weekly storage reports would diminish. “AGA’s weekly storage report is an important piece of data because industry participants perceive it as an indicator of the balance in supply and demand. But, because it is just about the only relevant and timely data available in the marketplace, there is an inordinate amount of price volatility associated with its anticipated release and its actual release,” he said.

APGA “firmly believes that the only way to combat such volatility is to make available to the marketplace other relevant production and consumption data, so that the AGA report is viewed in its proper perspective,” Cave noted.

The group recommended that the EIA meet with other industry trade groups and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission “as promptly as possible to develop a comprehensive list of the needed data to permit EIA to fulfill its statutory mission” under the FEAA.

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