Industry groups say govnerment data initiative would cost producers millions

Ray Tyson

Petroleum News Houston correspondent

The cost of complying with a proposed government initiative designed to speed up the processing and accuracy of information would total $15 million to $21 million for the top 250 to 350 producers reporting the data, according to a joint statement released by six industry groups.

The new initiative was proposed by the Energy Information Administration, the statistical arm of the U.S. Department of Energy.

“The proposed reporting would require additional capital, programming, computer run time and employee costs,” according to the joint statement by the Natural Gas Supply Association, the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. Oil and Gas Association, the National Ocean Industries Association, the Domestic Petroleum Council and the Independent Petroleum Association of America.

The quality and timeliness of the existing statistics came into focus earlier this year when the U.S. Minerals Management Service released data for 2002 and 2003 of gas production in the offshore Gulf of Mexico that caused the EIA to revise its already published production figures sharply downward and also to lower its estimates.