# Presentation: 174194

## Progress on EIA’s 914: Response Rate and Kinds of Challenges

- April 29, 2005
- John Wood,
- Director, Reserves and Production Division, Office of Oil and Gas

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A brief history of the EIA-914
Response Statistics
Data Quality
Problems with Texas Data
Questions for ASA

- A brief history of the EIA-914
- Response Statistics
- Data Quality
- Problems with Texas Data
- Questions for ASA

-  Presentation Points

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Substantially improve both the quality and timeliness of our monthly natural gas production estimates for key States and at the National level. 
Our target is to have releasable numbers 60 days after the close of a report month with a sampling error at the national level within  1% and within 1% to 5% for six areas; Texas, Federal Gulf of Mexico, Oklahoma, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Louisiana.

- Substantially improve both the quality and timeliness of our monthly natural gas production estimates for key States and at the National level.
- Our target is to have releasable numbers 60 days after the close of a report month with a sampling error at the national level within  1% and within 1% to 5% for six areas; Texas, Federal Gulf of Mexico, Oklahoma, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Louisiana.

-  EIA-914 Objectives

## EIA-914 Gas Production Survey

- The collection of production data for January 2005, the first survey month, is nearly complete.
- No data has been published yet.
- EIA plans to release January and February estimates at the end of May.

## History

- 2004
- Jan; Began drafting OMB request for clearance for the 914
- Apr; Site visits to 9 companies for cognitive interviews
- Oct; OMB clearance
- Nov; Selected cut off sample of 286
- Dec; Initialize STEPS (the survey processing system utilized) for the EIA-914, first mailing to operators

## History

- 2005
- Jan; Called all operators not responding to first contact
- Feb; EIA-914 Form sent to respondents by email and mail.  Received 10 responses in February, only 1 correct.
- Mar; 240 respondents reported.  Sent reminder to those not yet reporting.  Sent notice for February production report.
- Apr; As of 4/25 all but 2 small companies have reported.  Production weighted response rate is better than 99%.

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## How Did We Get High Response Rates ? 

- Worked hard to develop good relationships with respondents.
- Made reporting as easy as possible for surveyed natural gas producers.
- Assertively and repeatedly called and followed up with respondents.
- Trained staff that called.
- This staff included people that were experienced with the production data and company operations.

## How Was Data Quality?

- Not too good at first. Nine of first 10 had errors and the tenth one correctly reported all zeros.
- A large number of respondents made units errors. Most of these could probably have been avoided if we had asked for the same units that each State required.
- Resubmissions were asked for until the data was correctly reported.

## How Do The Production Estimates Look ?

- Obviously pretty good except for Texas.
- A 7 year history (1997-2003) of our Final Gross Gas production is shown with plus and minus bands that represent the average absolute error between the first State estimate published in the Natural Gas Monthly and the final volume known now. Estimates for 2004 are initial NGM estimates.
- The red square is the 914 based estimate for January 2005

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## HURRICANES

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## AREA COMPARISONS

- EIA-914 Percent Difference
- Area Target 1% to 5%
- Area’s Percent Difference meet those Percentages
- However, Significant Uncertainty exists in 4th Quarter estimates
- Three differences positive and three negative

- Relative Comfort Zone
- Near Zero is good
- Over One is bad
- Smaller than Texas is pretty good

## What’s Wrong With Texas ? 

- Texas has changed its form and data collection process and this changed the trend in the time series of reported data.
- Texas reports that the current data has more “deficiencies and delinquencies”.
- EIA’s current process for Texas, the Crystal Method, seems to be giving very low estimates, because it depends on a relatively stable time series for the preliminary data reports.

## Texas Graphics

- The blue line is final data through 2003 and current method
- The orange line is “Crystal Method” for 2004 and 2005.
-  The three short curves (Green 2001based, Blue 2002 based, and Fuchsia 2003 based) are a set of simple empirical estimates made for September,October, November, and December 2004 and January 2005 with 2 percent average absolute error bars.

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## Texas P2, P3 and P7 Reported Gas Production Rate - New Texas Form and Data Collection Implemented February 1, 2005 for January 2005 Data and Revisions to All Previous Months

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## Questions for the ASA Committee

- Is the 100 percent response rate for the Gulf of Mexico good enough?
- Will the high response rates inspire public confidence in the EIA-914 based natural gas production estimates?
- Is comparison with the historical data series and the average absolute errors associated with the current methodology a good way to evaluate the EIA-914 based estimates?
- What additional data could be shown to increase confidence in the EIA-914  estimates?