5. The Need for Improved Data on Natural Gas

Introduction

In 2001, in an effort to understand recent natural gas market events and to evaluate possible policy options, industry and policy analysts turned to government and private-sector information sources. They found that they often wanted more frequent data measurements and greater geographic detail than were provided in existing data collection programs, and that both government and private-sector information programs had data gaps and problems. In many cases, available data could not be used to analyze desired policy options or accurately interpret current and future markets.

Natural gas market analysts use information from a variety of sources—including Federal and State agencies and private information sources—to assess historical trends, operate forecasting models, and examine market issues related to infrastructure operation, regulatory regimes, and business decisions. General understanding of natural gas market trends can be enhanced by access to more complete, accurate, and timely data as well as by additional or expanded analyses using improved analytical techniques. In the past few years, however, as the natural gas market has grown and changed, concerns about the adequacy of natural gas data for understanding markets have become significant.

The problems and limitations of existing data programs have affected the ability to conduct some forms of analysis of the changing, growing industry. In recognition of this situation, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) began its Next Generation*Natural Gas (NG2) initiative in 1998 to assess the effect of the restructuring of the industry and changing customer needs on its future natural gas information program. Analysts and industry observers generally became aware of the issue in the past year, when increased attention was focused on natural gas markets.

This chapter discusses current U.S. Federal Government information sources for data on production, foreign trade, storage activity, consumption, and pricing of natural gas, with emphasis on the data series available from EIA. It also discusses the extent to which the accuracy, timeliness, and detail of the various EIA data series are adequate to support analyses of important gas market issues and trends and outlines options that are being considered to change EIA’s collection and dissemination of natural gas information.

Current Information Sources and Issues

A variety of EIA and other information sources currently contribute to understanding and tracking the operation of the natural gas industry. Data series provided by EIA describe portions of natural gas supply and reserves, disposition, and pricing for the United States and individual States. Other Federal agencies collect data to monitor natural gas resources, industry financial performance, or market structure and compliance with regulations for safety, environmental performance, and market operation. State agencies require data reporting for reasons such as royalty collection, resource conservation, monitoring of environmental and safety regulations, and tracking compliance with the requirements of State public utility commissions. Other information series, such as spot market prices and weekly reports of drilling rig activity, are provided by nongovernmental groups to members, subscribers, and the general public. Tables 13 and 14 summarize some of the principal sources of natural gas industry data.

Federal Government programs for the collection of economic data for the natural gas industry were originally designed for two purposes: to measure supply and consumption activity and to provide information for economic regulatory programs. The Bureau of Mines, U.S. Department of Interior, conducted voluntary annual surveys of the natural gas industry until 1977, when this function was transferred to EIA in the newly formed U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The EIA natural gas data program also has roots in the data collection effort that EIA performed for many years on behalf of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), an independent commission with jurisdiction over the regulation of the interstate natural gas industry. The original collection programs reflected an industry of regulated producers, regulated pipelines, regulated local distribution companies (LDCs) delivering gas to end users, and regulated prices. Foreign trade was almost inconsequential, because net imports accounted for only about 4 percent of U.S. natural gas consumption in 1977.

The most important changes in the natural gas industry since the late 1970s have been deregulation of production prices and restructuring of major portions of the transmission system. In 1978 Congress passed the Natural Gas Policy Act, which began a phased decontrol of wellhead prices for different categories of natural gas. Price decontrol was completed with the passage of the Wellhead Decontrol Act in 1989. In a series of FERC orders in the 1980s and early 1990s, pipeline companies were required to provide nondiscriminatory access to transportation services. FERC Order 436 required interstate pipelines to provide nondiscriminatory access to transportation services. With the implementation of FERC Order 636, interstate natural gas pipelines became open access transporters, with no merchant function.

Similar changes in regulation have occurred at the State level since the mid-1990s. Increasing numbers of large consumers chose to make gas purchases from different suppliers and to purchase only transportation services from interstate pipelines and LDCs. More recently, State customer choice programs have offered similar options to residential and small commercial customers. Another important change has been the increased role of foreign trade in gas supply and disposition. Net natural gas imports were approximately 15 percent of U.S. natural gas consumption in 2000.

EIA’s natural gas data collection instruments have changed as well. In 1980, EIA combined and expanded voluntary annual surveys that had been operated by the Bureau of Mines into the first mandatory survey. A new voluntary annual survey of State agencies was also initiated, to collect data on the quantities and values of natural gas produced. Storage information (first collected in the 1970s and 1980s in an annual survey jointly conducted by several agencies) was collected monthly beginning in 1991.¹⁰² A monthly survey of deliveries to end-use sectors began in December 1984. The EIA surveys were redesigned over time to reflect changes in the regulation and operation of the industry, but changes in the surveys often lagged behind regulatory changes because of the time needed to identify new approaches, obtain revised collection authorities, and change survey instruments and processing and dissemination systems.

EIA’s current natural gas data collection program remains basically an annual effort to obtain comprehensive information on natural gas volumes and prices. It has been expanded to provide more frequent, though less complete, monthly measurements and estimates of national and State data elements. Annual reports are received from more than 1,800 respondents representing the U.S. natural gas supply and disposition system. The national and State data are available about 9 months after the end of the reporting year. The monthly program provides estimates of major natural gas market activity measures approximately 60 to 90 days after the close of the reporting month, based on a combination of monthly surveys and estimation procedures.¹⁰³

EIA’s monthly data series have usually been reliable, consistent predictors of the final annual data series; however, the two sources share many of the same problems. For example, both have recently been less timely than in the past, and both have indicated larger than usual data problems through the size of their respective balancing items (see discussion on "Balancing Items in EIA's Natural Gas Data Series"). The balancing item is a calculated residual that represents the difference between measured supply and disposition of natural gas for a given time period, such as a month or year. The following sections provide an overview of major supply, demand, and price series and their primary data quality problems, with discussion of possible approaches to addressing the problems. EIA will be requesting comment on proposed changes to its natural gas data program during 2002.

Production

Natural gas sold for consumption—primarily methane—is produced either in a gaseous state or in solution with oil. The gas produced at the wellhead is a mixture of hydrocarbons and nonhydrocarbons. These “gross” gas volumes are subsequently reduced through a number of field processes. In some cases, operators re-inject a portion of the gas to maintain oil field pressure. A small portion may be vented and flared, almost exclusively for safety reasons. The nonhydrocarbons are removed sufficiently to comply with pipeline specifications. The gas volumes remaining after re-injection, venting, flaring, and nonhydrocarbon removal are described as “marketed” gas production. Because most “marketed” gas streams also contain heavier hydrocarbon gases such as ethane, butane, and propane, this “wet gas” is sent to a natural gas processing plant where the nonmethane hydrocarbons are removed. The resulting “dry gas” product is ready for transport to end users.

Due to the large cost of collecting and processing data from many thousands of natural gas producers, the annual and monthly measurement of marketed gas production is based on the voluntary annual and monthly reports provided on Form EIA-895, “Monthly Quantity and Value of Natural Gas Report,” by the producing States and the Minerals Management Service (MMS) of the U.S. Department of Interior. Form EIA-895 is the successor to earlier voluntary annual reports and to a voluntary monthly report used until 1995 by the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission (IOGCC) to prepare monthly State production estimates. EIA became responsible for monthly production estimates in January 1995. Data collection from the States is voluntary, because the Federal Government has no authority to require States to provide information.

The States and MMS are asked to submit data on several production activities in order to calculate “marketed production,” the volume produced in a State or offshore region before the output is sent to a natural gas processing plant. The States and MMS collect and process data from producers for different reasons, including supporting their tax and royalty collection programs and administering natural resource or environmental management programs. The States and MMS process data from an estimated 22,000 operators of nearly 300,000 gas wells. They receive and process the information for revenue purposes, but the resulting reported sales volumes do not necessarily represent production in the report period requested by EIA.

In most cases, monthly production data for the previous year are available to EIA by late summer of the following year; however, there are exceptions. Late and incomplete monthly reports are common. In addition, the State and Federal revenue forms are designed to provide information for basic revenue programs. They differ from State to State and often do not include all information elements requested by EIA. This frequently means that the elements used to calculate marketed production must be estimated by EIA from whatever data elements are submitted, from information included in State publications and web sites, from trade press, or from prior year data.

EIA has discussed the above issues with the data respondents. Some respondents have recommended that EIA use their web sites to obtain the most recent measures of sales volumes and revenues. Other analysts have suggested that EIA might process copies of the data provided by producers to the States and MMS or create an alternative monthly data collection process for some or all of the producing States. Those approaches would represent significant increases in the burden on producers and the resources required for EIA to obtain improved data series. Others have suggested that EIA should acknowledge the difficulties and change its program to estimate U.S. production on a monthly frequency using the best data available and collect and present State data only annually. EIA will request comments on these and other approaches during 2002.

Foreign Trade

Companies planning to import or export natural gas by pipeline or as liquefied natural gas (LNG) are required to obtain authorization from the Office of Fossil Energy, U.S. Department of Energy. As a condition for authorizations to import or export natural gas, companies must then file quarterly reports with the Office of Fossil Energy. The data are reported at a monthly level of detail. The compiled data are presented in the quarterly publication “Quarterly Natural Gas Import and Export Sales and Price Report” and provided to EIA in a quarterly computer file for presentation in the Natural Gas Monthly. Because data are available only once a quarter, they lag behind other monthly supply and disposition series. EIA prepares estimates or uses other sources to represent imports for the most recent months. For example, EIA uses the monthly data prepared by the National Energy Board of Canada to estimate imports and exports from Canada. There are no comparable data sources for LNG trade or trade with Mexico.

EIA has requested that the Office of Fossil Energy modify its data collection and processing program to provide monthly data reports. If this is not possible, EIA will pursue other sources and may request comments during 2002 on the option of creating a new EIA survey for imports and exports of LNG.

Storage Capacity and Activity

Natural gas is stored underground in depleted gas and oil fields, depleted aquifers, and salt caverns, as well as in aboveground LNG storage tanks. The volumes held in storage typically are withdrawn to supplement current gas production and imports during the winter, when gas demand peaks for residential and commercial customers. Storage volumes are rebuilt during the spring, summer, and fall, when gas demand is much lower.

The volume of natural gas held in underground storage facilities includes base gas and working gas. Base gas is held in permanent inventory to maintain adequate underground storage reservoir pressures and deliverability rates; working gas is held for withdrawal as needed. Volumes are also held in LNG storage tanks at import terminals, at peak shaving facilities associated with LDCs, and at other locations. LNG volumes are estimated to be about 4 to 5 percent of the volumes held in underground facilities, but they are important in some regional markets.

Data on base and working gas in underground storage are collected each month on a storage field and reservoir basis on Form EIA-191, “Monthly Underground Gas Storage Report.” Storage levels are then published on a State basis. The monthly data are subsequently adjusted to correspond to data from Form EIA-176, “Annual Report of Natural and Supplemental Gas Supply and Disposition,” following publication of the Natural Gas Annual. There are occasional problems, because some respondents provide data about accounting transactions while others provide volumetric metering data, but the storage reports are the most timely of the monthly data series.

Reports collected on the annual Form EIA-176 also provide monthly data for the prior year on LNG storage injections and withdrawals at import terminals and at LDC peak shaving facilities. Data on LNG storage at facilities other than import terminals or LDC facilities are not collected on monthly or annual forms. EIA is currently studying the issue of whether monthly LNG storage inventories and activity are important to regional supplies and should be the subject of monthly data collections to improve the completeness and timeliness of storage measures.

In October 2001, Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham directed EIA to begin a weekly gas storage survey in May 2002, after the American Gas Association (AGA) announced its intent to stop the weekly survey of natural gas storage it had been conducting since the beginning of 1994. AGA has collected weekly data from a sample of storage companies and estimated underground storage levels for the United States and three regions. The AGA survey has been widely followed by gas industry analysts and market participants, because it is the most timely gas market data series. EIA will issue a Federal Register notice in December 2001 describing the new survey.

Consumption Data

Natural gas is consumed in a variety of ways. Among its leading uses are space heating, cooking, operation of water heaters, industrial process heat, power generation, compressor operation, and as a feedstock in industrial and chemical processes such as fertilizer manufacture.

About four-fifths of gas consumption is measured monthly and annually by the reports of end-use deliveries to pipeline meters, as reported by LDCs and interstate and intrastate transmission pipelines. Monthly data are collected on Form EIA-857, “Monthly Report of Natural Gas Purchases and Deliveries to Consumers,” from a sample of the LDCs and pipelines making deliveries to end users. Annual data are collected from all known delivery firms on Form EIA-176, “Annual Report of Natural Gas Supply and Disposition.” The remaining gas consumption by electric utilities and the gas supply industry is collected in other ways. Gas used at electric utility plants is reported monthly by the plant operators on Form EIA-906, “Power Plant Report.” In addition, the 8 to 9 percent of gas supply used in the production and transportation of natural gas (e.g., on leases, at processing plants, and in pipelines) is reported annually on Form EIA-176.

The collection of gas consumption data has been affected by the continuing restructuring of the natural gas and electricity generation industries, which started in the mid-1980s and mid-1990s, respectively. Industry changes have increased the difficulty of measuring total gas use accurately and assigning it to the appropriate end-use sector—residential, commercial, industrial, or electric utility. Issues include the following.

Traditional end-use sector definitions do not reflect changes in electricity generation. In 2000, approximately 3.05 trillion cubic feet of natural gas was consumed by electric utilities, according to data collected on EIA’s “Monthly Power Plant Report.” EIA’s natural gas data publications use the data collected in the electric power data system for measures of fuel used at electric utilities. The low values in recent years for this portion of gas consumption reflect the declining role of electric utilities in electricity generation and the increasing role of independent power producers and cogenerators.

In 2000, nonutility generators used 3.29 trillion cubic feet—8 percent more gas than utility generators. Within the natural gas information system, nonutility generator and cogenerator gas use is reported in the industrial or commercial sector, depending on the nature of the firm. Other EIA information sources are combining data from the electric power data system for fuel used by plants engaged entirely in electricity generation (electric utilities and independent power producers) for a fuller measure of fuel used in electricity generation. However, fuel use data are not currently available for cogenerators.

EIA is studying how to divide fuel use by cogenerators to distinguish electricity use and other uses in those sectors. Gas used at cogenerators is reported in the gas data system in the sector that most closely corresponds to the primary line of business of the cogenerator firm. For example, gas used at an automobile plant that generated electricity and sold a portion to the grid would be measured as use in the industrial sector, but gas used at a hospital or university that generated electricity and sold a portion would be measured as use in the commercial sector. EIA is working to develop an approach to better measurement of fuel use for electricity generation from all nonutility generators. Identifying end uses accurately will help analysts determine the economic effects of fuel price changes.

Firms providing natural gas delivery do not know the intended use for delivered gas. When gas pipelines and LDCs owned the gas they delivered, their customer billing records provided information about the purchasing firms, from which the intended end use of the delivered gas might be deduced. The delivery firms were able to report to EIA the volumes delivered in each State to residential, commercial, and industrial customer groups. Now, pipeline firms and LDCs frequently provide gas delivery services at the direction of an intermediate party handling purchasing for the final customers, and they often do not have information about customers to use in assigning deliveries to end-use sectors.

The extent of the problem varies from sector to sector. LDCs continue to sell natural gas to residential and many commercial customers in most States, and hence they have information about customers which they use to identify volume and price information affecting those end-use customer groups. Interstate and intrastate pipelines, however, often are providing only transportation services from point to point in transactions arranged by someone other than the final user of the gas. This means the deliverers to the drop-off meter do not know the identity or sector of the firm using the gas.

Two illustrations may demonstrate the complexity of correctly assigning gas use to end-use sectors even when the general identity of the user is known:

1. A State University takes gas from a single pipeline inlet but uses some of that gas to heat dormitories (a residential sector use), some to heat classrooms (a commercial sector use), and some to generate electricity for campus use.

2. A building in a metropolitan area also takes gas from a single pipeline supplier, but the building provides both condominium (residential sector) and office (commercial sector) space.

Pipelines and distribution companies are asked to assign all gas use to the category in which the predominant usage occurred, but this may be difficult to determine.

A related problem is that many pipeline companies are incorrectly reporting the end-use deliveries made from their systems as commercial sector deliveries, because the marketing firms that purchased the delivery services are defined as part of the commercial sector. Other pipeline companies are reporting sales transactions data—i.e., volumes sold to marketers—as deliveries to commercial sector end users. Because gas is frequently sold and resold as it moves through pipelines, such misunderstandings can lead to overstatement of deliveries.

Changes in the natural gas industry have had several significant effects on data quality. The natural gas industry has grown and restructured in recent years as it moved away from its past, more regulated structure. New unregulated firms and unregulated subsidiaries of existing firms have created new business practices. These changes have affected the business records that the firms must legally maintain and report to regulatory agencies. The types of information previously created for regulatory requirements, and thus easily available for reporting to EIA, are no longer available, and the staff that once prepared the regulatory reports and similar EIA reports are no longer allocated to those functions. Together these changes have resulted in increased problems for EIA data quality and completeness. In recent years more respondents are providing late and problem data. As a result, summary data from several States have not been acceptable for publication in a timely fashion. EIA has had to increase its data quality efforts to reduce this problem.

There have also been large numbers of new firms, business sales, reorganizations, and mergers during this period. EIA has sought to keep abreast of these changes by maintaining a current list of appropriate survey respondents. To maintain the respondent population for its Form EIA-176 survey, EIA must track changes in the business activities (storage, end-use deliveries, and shipments) of all gas firms in all States. During this period of change, the task has been difficult. Not all new firms or new operations for merged or reorganized firms may have been identified. EIA has recently expanded its efforts to maintain a complete frame of gas supply and disposition companies. Staff at newly identified or reorganized offices have also found it difficult to provide meaningful data to EIA for many reasons. One of these has been the complexity and content of the EIA-176 survey instrument itself, which is now 6 pages long and requires 15 pages of instructions.

EIA believes that its annual and monthly natural gas data collection forms will need to be simplified and redesigned to reflect current industry operations and minimize respondent burden and confusion. EIA will provide a proposal for simplification and request comments on this and other approaches to collect meaningful, timely, and accurate data. Several suggestions have already been provided to EIA, including proposals for simplification of the consumption forms and instructions, and changing the collection targets to correspond to current business records.

Prices

In addition to the data series reporting natural gas volumes, EIA also provides several monthly price data series and corresponding annual revisions. The current surveys were developed to capture prices during the previous month at three significant points in the supply chain of the industry. The “wellhead” price is the first price in the supply chain measured by EIA. It is intended to represent the value of marketed gas production in producing States. The “citygate” price represents the price at the point of entry to LDC systems. The “consumption” prices provided by EIA are the prices of gas sold and delivered by pipelines and LDCs to end-use customers in the residential, commercial, industrial, and electric utility sectors. Prices paid by electric utilities to acquire gas for utility generation are collected directly from the utilities on electric power data forms, and the other end-use prices are collected on natural gas data forms. The price data assist in the interpretation and measurement of energy supply and demand. However, industry restructuring has changed the business records used by respondents and limited respondents’ ability to provide useful data. Some of these issues are described below.

Wellhead prices are intended to represent the value of marketed gas production. As noted above, marketed gas production is the volume of “wet gas” produced. The data series is calculated for the United States and individual producing States from voluntary reports received from the States and the MMS. EIA requests information on the volume and value of marketed gas production but recognizes that the States and MMS do not always use this point in the supply chain for their valuation. In those instances, EIA asks the respondents to provide available value data and a validated quantity for each month. Given the differences in the point at which valuation of gas for tax and royalty purposes occurs, as well as the treatment of such monetary elements as taxes and other fees, EIA must make adjustments to reach a common definition across States. In addition, because data are not provided for most States until months after the requested report date (the 20th day after the end of the report month), EIA uses an estimation procedure for the U.S. average wellhead prices until complete data reports are received from the States.¹⁰⁴ Most of the respondents have provided data by the release date of the Natural Gas Annual, approximately 9 months after the end of the report year. A revised U.S. estimate and State data are presented in the Natural Gas Annual, but the data may continue to be revised for another year.

Citygate prices are reported monthly and annually for each State. The monthly prices are based on monthly data collected on Form EIA-857 from a sample of LDCs in each State. Annual prices are based on data provided by all LDCs on Form EIA-176. Respondents are asked to report the cost to them of purchased gas received in the distribution service area. The price series has traditionally been contrasted to the prices paid by final users to illustrate the relative shares of final user prices associated with each stage of the supply chain. Because LDCs are the respondents providing citygate price information, the term is meaningful only for analyzing possible costs and profits of gas purchased from the LDCs. The citygate price is not meaningful for understanding fuel costs in the industrial and electric utility sectors, because most gas delivered to those sectors is not purchased through LDCs.

End-use sector prices are also provided monthly and annually for each State. The monthly prices for the residential, commercial, and industrial sectors are calculated from data collected on Form EIA-857 from a sample of LDCs and interstate and intrastate pipelines making deliveries to end users. The monthly price for deliveries to the electric utility sector is based on data collected on the electricity survey Form EIA-906, “Power Plant Report.”¹⁰⁵ Respondents are asked to report revenues and associated sales volumes to determine unit prices. Annual data for the residential, commercial, and industrial sectors are derived from Form EIA-176 data; annual data for the electricity sector are derived from revisions to the electricity form (EIA-906).

There are a number of concerns about EIA’s natural gas price series. Most are related to the changing operation of the industry since restructuring. For price data, just as for volume data, the fact that pipelines and LDCs no longer know the purchasers and purchase terms for large volumes of gas sold means that data collected from them are less representative for measuring the average price of all final deliveries.

After FERC Order 436 was issued in 1985, large consumers of natural gas began to purchase natural gas directly from producers or in market hub transactions. They no longer purchased the commodity from the LDCs and interstate pipelines. The pipeline companies and LDCs completing EIA surveys knew only the price of gas purchased directly from them, and their direct sales have fallen from 75 percent of total gas delivered to industrial customers in 1984 to 15 to 18 percent of all industrial sales in the late 1990s (Figure 26).

EIA has continued to use the price information collected from LDCs and intrastate pipelines to measure industrial sector prices. Because these prices probably represent smaller industrial customers, it is likely that the reported sector prices are higher than the actual average industrial price. EIA explored the idea of measuring prices paid by firms in the industrial sector through the direct collection of price data from gas customers who were respondents to the U.S. Survey of Manufactures conducted each month by the Bureau of the Census. However, this approach for collecting price data from industrial gas customers rather than gas suppliers would cost more than the natural gas data program could afford.

As residential and commercial sector customer choice programs grow, a similar problem might develop for measuring end-use prices in those sectors, because residential and commercial customers can now purchase the commodity and the transportation services separately. EIA is currently implementing a new survey in Georgia, Maryland, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania to determine whether price data collected from marketing firms will sustain and improve the quality of residential and commercial sector price data in customer choice States. EIA is examining how to combine the commodity and transportation price data from marketers and LDCs to create an end-use price.

A problem shared by citygate and end-use price series is the fact that most natural gas transactions are conducted on the basis of heat content. Heat content is measured in British thermal units (Btu) or therms.¹⁰⁶ EIA has continued to request volume data measured in thousand cubic feet and has asked for the average Btu content of gas delivered to customers to assist in conversions. These adjustments, however, provide an opportunity for misreporting and error.

A number of suggestions have been made to improve natural gas price data. For the most part the suggestions continue to focus on collecting data from the natural gas industry, which includes fewer collection points than collecting data from customers. Suggestions for improving information from the gas industry include changing from an end-use sector orientation for data to an orientation that corresponds with the tariff data that industry can easily provide. Such a change might mean that price data would be available according to size of purchase or terms of service, not sector. Another suggestion is to pursue complementary forms for marketers and delivery firms to capture the price of delivered gas to customers for both groups; however, the possibility of mixing transactions data with final delivery data could be significant.

Opportunities for Change

The review of EIA’s major data series indicates a number of challenges to the scope and quality of current natural gas data. Several were recognized previously, when EIA developed a program in the late 1990s to redesign its natural gas information program to reflect the restructuring of the industry and to meet customer needs in the post-2000 time frame. The Next Generation*Natural Gas (NG2) project included efforts to identify and address data quality problems for current price and volume series and to identify requirements for new kinds of data. Another issue raised during the NG2 focus group sessions was a concern that EIA data on prices and volumes needed to be more timely, because the natural gas market is no longer based in long-term contracts. Greater data timeliness and accuracy were emphasized more than developing new data elements. EIA believes it must determine how quality and timeliness for major components of current programs can be maintained or improved and what tradeoffs between accuracy and timeliness must be addressed before new data collection proposals are considered.

EIA data collection programs operate under authority granted in the Federal Energy Administration Act (Public Law 93-275). Approximately every 3 years, each data program must be reviewed by the Office of Management and Budget to determine that the program conforms to this authority, meets information needs, and represents the minimum paperwork burden for respondents. During the review the public is asked to comment on the current and proposed surveys. Because authority for the current natural gas data collection program expires at the end of 2002, EIA will be proposing a number of changes in the program during the coming year. EIA will invite suggestions and comment on many of the issues discussed in this chapter.

Notes