Proposed improvements to the Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) storage survey process sparked a debate among industry and government representatives on a panel examining natural gas market data Monday during the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Natural Gas Conference.

EIA’s recent request for comments for its revisions policy (see Daily GPI, Jan. 10) missed the point, Keith Barnett of AEP told legislators — the point being to get it right the first time in order not to have to make revisions. Barnett suggested EIA should expand its survey respondents to match the number of respondents in its monthly survey.

Also, EIA should assign one of its analysts to do the same thing outside analysts do, looking at degree days and other indicators in order to predict what the weekly survey number should be. That could be done on Monday when all the responses for the previous week are in. Then if the actual survey number diverges substantially from the prediction, there would be time to go back and double-check to make sure the numbers submitted and entered are correct before the Thursday announcement is made.

Elizabeth Campbell, director of survey data collection for EIA, said that to more than double the 56 weekly survey respondents to match the 120 who respond to EIA’s monthly survey, would increase the possibility of mistakes and the problem with companies not responding. With its current weekly survey EIA covers all the largest storage holders, comprising between 91-96% of storage inventory.

Further, Campbell said, to materially increase the number of survey respondents, EIA would have to seek authorization from the Office of Management and Budget to increase the paperwork burden on the industry. Regarding the suggestion that an EIA analyst track the market, she said the agency does that now, tracking the weather and monitoring the trade press for the estimates of other analysts. Even with those safeguards, there can be errors, she pointed out.

Addressing the question of errors, Skip Horvath, president of the Natural Gas Supply Association, suggested that storage survey announcements not be made just before holidays, citing the disastrous EIA storage report the day before the Thanksgiving holiday last year and another error before a July 4th holiday. At those times, it is often the case that the most senior people are on holiday leave and those left in charge are unsupervised, inexperienced and more prone to error.

Gary Chapman, senior commercial manager for Dow Chemical, the largest industrial consumer of natural gas, said EIA should be directed to provide daily reporting of natural gas in storage, citing a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission conference on the subject. However, Steve Harvey, from FERC’s Office of Market Oversight and Investigations, said while FERC explored the question of whether there should be some type of daily storage level postings by companies, it did not contemplate EIA aggregating the numbers every day.

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