The Energy Information Administration (EIA) has signed a data sharing agreement and formed an information gathering partnership with the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission (IOGCC), an organization of governors that represents 37 oil and gas producing states. The pact is part of a broader government effort to improve EIA’s natural gas supply data, which has a significant time lag and often goes through multiple revisions, sometime more than a year after the fact.

The memorandum of understanding is designed to make better use of data from the member states, which regulate and tax the production of oil and natural gas within their borders and possess a great deal of information about those industries, especially the production and consumption of natural gas.

EIA, as the nation’s principal source of energy data, believes that closer cooperation with these states, through the IOGCC, can help to increase the timeliness and accuracy of the state and national monthly natural gas production data estimates that it publishes.

The agreement, which was signed on Oct. 20 by Govs. John Hoeven of North Dakota and Frank Murkowski of Alaska, IOGCC Vice Chairman Lynn Helms, and EIA Administrator Guy Caruso, creates a joint EIA-IOGCC team that will establish mechanisms to promote certain objectives. The team will invite representatives from state oil and gas regulatory agencies, the IOGCC, EIA, DOE and FERC to participate. It will identify key areas of concern and recommend proposed actions and solutions to problem of gas supply data dissemination and accuracy.

Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham announced a Natural Gas Data Collection Initiative in June 2003 that was designed to improve the quality and timeliness of natural gas data. The National Petroleum Council (NPC) in a report dated September 2003 entitled “Balancing Natural Gas Policy – Fueling the Demands of a Growing Economy” also recommends that EIA coordinate with states and federal agencies to improve data-collecting processes.

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