The federal government’s budget sequestration has hit the Energy Information Administration (EIA), forcing the agency to suspend publication of its Annual Energy Review (AER) and its companion publication, Energy Perspectives. The publications, which were to have come out later this year, were to have included data compiled during 2012.

EIA said it will expand its Monthly Energy Review (MER) to incorporate annual data as far back as 1949 for data series from about 70 key tables that are currently included in both AER and MER. The expanded monthly publication will combine historical data usually published in the AER with up-to-date data from the MER.

“While this plan provides benefits for some AER users, as well as resource savings, it does not provide a new dissemination channel for other annual data that were previously presented only in the AER,” the agency said. “EIA will work with its customers to understand which of these data are most important, and will develop plans for the future dissemination of such data as allowed by its budget.”

The announcement comes just weeks after EIA said it hoped to expand its monthly 914 survey to include individual reports on 14 states (see Shale Daily, April 3). EIA’s ability to expand its reporting of gas production would hinge on several factors, including the federal government’s budget sequestration, Barbara Mariner-Volpe of EIA’s Office of Energy Statistics said at the time.

EIA has a history of modifying its data reports as budgets have dictated. Two years ago the government agency said a $15.2 million shave in agency funding in the fiscal year 2011 budget would scale back its energy analysis offerings (see Daily GPI, April 29, 2011). That year the EIA said it would not prepare or publish the year’s edition of U.S. proved oil and natural gas reserves; it would curtail efforts to understand linkages between physical energy markets and financial trading; it would suspend auditing of data submitted by major oil and gas companies and reporting on their 2010 financial performance; and it would reduce collection of data from natural gas marketing companies.

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