FERC Commissioner Nora Brownell suggested last Thursday that FERC join forces with the Energy Information Administration (EIA) to determine what other data could be made available to the natural gas market on a regular basis to provide more transparency on prices.

“I’d like to maybe see if we could have an internal working group or stakeholders’ group with EIA or DOE to maybe bring the various parties together to decide what it is we need and how we’re going to use it,” she said during the regular Commission meeting.

Brownell believes the group should be led by the American Public Gas Association (APGA), which first proposed the idea in a letter to EIA last month. APGA called on the EIA to begin collecting and disbursing “reliable and timely” gas production and consumption information on a regular basis to help temper the “extreme price swings” in the market. The group of municipal distributors urged EIA to meet with other industry trade groups and FERC “as promptly as possible to develop a comprehensive list of the needed data” for the market (See NGI, Oct. 1).

Chairman Pat Wood agreed the industry needs more data, noting that there is far too much reliance in the gas market on the only source of regularly available information — the American Gas Association’s (AGA) weekly storage data. The AGA “has done a great job of getting the storage data all these year,” but there was “one little hiccup” with the data this summer, and “everybody went crazy,” he said. “The fact that we’re hanging our hat on this one data set that comes out at 1 p.m. on Wednesday…is phenomenal.”

Woods comments were made prior to AGA’s announcement Friday that it plans to discontinue its weekly storage reports effective Jan. 2, 2002.

As for APGA’s proposal, Wood said, “I don’t know if that’s right or wrong, [or] if that’s really our job or EIA’s to do.” He noted that “it’s not been…FERC’s job to be the procurer of this information,” but he indicated that maybe it was time to discuss the issue with the EIA.

“I think it’s an issue that would certainly be a benefit to the market,” Wood said. “It “would behoove us and everybody to figure out a way to get more [transparency] information” for the market. “I don’t have any great thoughts” on this, he conceded.

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