WASHINGTON — The federal government will soon begin collecting more information about the amount of oil and gas pouring out of wells across the United States, with the data likely to drive policy debates in the nation’s capital.
The move comes courtesy of the Energy Information Administration, which is expanding its existing “914″ monthly survey, now limited to collecting information about gas production from about 240 producers in five states and the Gulf of Mexico. The new version will pull in production data about crude and gas from 15 and the Gulf, with about twice as many respondents.
EIA just won the Office of Management and Budget’s approval to make the change, with new surveys expected in January and initial data likely to begin flowing next June. The expanded survey also is set to yield data about the type of crudes being harvested in the United States, with oil production being categorized by API gravity, a measure of density.
Those numbers, expected in December 2015, would for the first time shine a light on the amount of ultralight condensate flowing out of U.S. wells, even as oil companies move to export the hydrocarbon. Condensate is typically a gas underground but a liquid at normal pressure, making it less desirable to refineries geared toward heavy crudes.
Read more: BHP Billiton to export condensate
Oil producers are hoping the new survey will encourage policymakers to ease trade restrictions that block most crude from being sold overseas. Producers’ chief argument for oil exports is their concern that a tidal wave of light, sweet crude will overtake the capacity of the nation’s refiners to process it.
EIA administrator Adam Sieminski has argued that the bigger monthly production survey would mean more transparency and timeliness. The agency currently relies on state agencies to give it data about oil production, with numbers sometimes still fluctuating 20 months after the crude first flowed.
Read more: Government lags in measuring gush of crude
But a coalition of industry trade groups has criticized the EIA’s planned survey expansion as too burdensome, especially for small, private producers.
The EIA had already made some changes to its planned survey in response to industry’s concerns. The Office of Management and Budget forced the agency to make more. Specifically, EIA won approval to survey production in 15 states plus the Gulf — not the 19 states and the Gulf it originally targeted.
The expanded survey will capture production in 10 additional states: Arkansas, California, Colorado, Kansas, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Utah, and West Virginia. That builds on the current, five-state lineup: Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and Wyoming).
Like other energy analysts, the EIA has shifted the way it collects and interprets oil and gas data in response to the surge in domestic drilling and production.
For instance, last year, the EIA began issuing a new “drilling productivity” report that attempts to move beyond rig rates as a sign of productivity.
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