EIA to change crude production report method

OREANDA-NEWS. July 13, 2015.  The Energy Information Administration (EIA) will change the way it calculates US crude production every month because data from state agencies — including the Texas Railroad Commission — is often incomplete or lagging.

The EIA later this summer will shift to a method based on a direct survey of oil producers, a similar system that it uses to calculate monthly natural gas output.

Crude production data published by state agencies are often incomplete because of a combination of late reporting and processing delays, the EIA said.

Information published by the Texas Railroad Commission, the agency that oversees oil and gas development in that top US-producing state, often differs with data put out by the EIA because of differences in the treatment of this incomplete and delayed information.

Initial production reports by the Texas commission tend to be low and are subsequently revised higher, the EIA said. This is because in Texas some reports are placed in a pending file while waiting for other state reporting requirements to be satisfied. In addition, some reports from oil and gas operators with discrepancies take time to resolve.

The EIA's current method of calculating state monthly crude production relies on this state-provided data and also on adjusted state data from third party sources.

The new system will be based on a direct survey of producers in 15 states, including Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and New Mexico.

The EIA's "Form 914" natural gas survey was recently expanded to provide individual gross monthly output data from the same 15 states, including North Dakota, which has become a major crude and natural gas producer because of growing output from the Bakken shale.

The EIA said that the similar oil survey, which began earlier this year, is being evaluated internally and will begin publication later in the summer. It should garner about 95pc of crude production in the Lower-48 states.

The monthly natural gas report will be revamped to include crude data and will be renamed Monthly Crude Oil and Natural Gas Production.

EIA administrator Adam Sieminski, the former chief energy economist at Deutsche Bank, has been advocating for changes to EIA's various data reports since he became the chief of the Energy Department's research and analytical arm in May.

Sieminski has also pledged to provide more data on oil that moves by rail and truck, which has increased vastly because of limited pipeline capacity out of shale formations like the Bakken.