EIA expanded geographic coverage of oil and natural gas production, with new data for 10 states

Abstract

In 2015 EIA has expanded its reporting of monthly oil (including lease condensate) and natural gas production by 10 additional states. The addition of these states – Arkansas, California, Colorado, Kansas, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Utah, and West Virginia – significantly enhances EIA's monthly coverage, which was previously limited to Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Wyoming, and the Federal Gulf of Mexico.

Accompanying EIA's expanded coverage has been a new webpage, Monthly Crude Oil and Natural Gas Production, which replaces the Monthly Natural Gas Gross Production Report. EIA use it to report survey-based estimates for monthly crude oil and natural gas production from the states covered by the new EIA-914 survey including production data categorized by API gravity, an important measure of crude oil quality.

Monthly oil and natural gas production estimates for 15 states, the Federal Gulf of Mexico, and the rest of the country (aggregated and reported as “Other States”) are provided through February 2016. These estimates are based on data collected from a sample of U.S. operators on the expanded Form EIA-914 survey, with the exception of Alaska, which directly reports its volumes. Monthly production estimates for the expansion states, as with the original individually surveyed states and areas, are available with only a two-month lag for example, the May release includes production estimates for February 2016. Previously, estimates for these 10 states were delayed by as much as two years.

The expanded geographic scope of the EIA-914 survey is in response to significant increases in U.S. oil and natural gas production over the past several years, as well as important changes in production sources over this period. For example, the original EIA-914 survey, which was initiated in 2005, did not offer individual coverage for states such as Pennsylvania that have undergone transformative natural gas production growth, or for other states.

Oil and natural gas production data collected on the EIA-914 survey are used as inputs to several EIA products, including the Natural Gas Monthly and EIA forecasts such as the Short-Term Energy Outlook and the Annual Energy Outlook.

AAPG Datapages/Search and Discovery Article #90258 © 2016 AAPG Eastern Section Meeting, Lexington, Kentucky, September 25-27, 2016