The state of awareness and planning of smaller companies, both regulated and unregulated, is less certain. The FERC is working cooperatively with other federal agencies as a member of the President's Council on year 2000 conversion, through participation in the Council's energy working group, the Commission has been designated leader of the oil and natural gas sector. The Department of Energy is leading the effort with respect to the electric power industry. Clearly, the presence of computer technology in oil and gas business is both a blessing and, in this case, a potential problem. Natural gas pipelines depend on electric utilities to power some of their compressor stations and other pipeline systems.
Telecommunications companies help track and record oil and gas movements.
Failure by any of these service providers can impact delivery of oil and natural gas. In the oil and natural gas sector there are also inter-dependencies between production facilities and pipelines used for transporting and distributing oil and gas. 2000 problem is an on-going challenge. While newer systems may not be at risk in isolation, they could be effected because of their links to older legacy systems which have never been replaced. Older mainframe computer systems are at greater risks than newer ones.