EIA terminates updates to International Energy Statistics

Posted on May 1, 2011

In a press release dated 28/4/2011 the Energy Information Administration of the US Department of Energy announced they will terminate updates to International Energy Statistics due to FY 2011 budget cuts. This follows the discontinuation in January of the International Petroleum Monthly.

This web site has relied on these EIA data.

Those who like conspiracy theories might now speculate that this is the latest attempt to cover up peak oil. We note that in 2010 EIA data for Saudi Arabia started to take off from the rest of the pack (IEA, OPEC and JODI).

In April, just 2 weeks before this notice of termination, EIA’s data for Saudi crude production went completely off-charts compared to other data providers, when 2010 figures were revised upwards by up to 700 Kb/d. While EIA’s revisions were quite common, often many months and even years back, the magnitude of this revision was unusually high. Whether the budget cuts are related to this revision is unknown.

And this is the original text of the press release:

Consumption, Efficiency, and International Energy Information
  • Suspend work on EIA’s 2011 Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS), the Nation’s only source of statistical data for energy consumption and related characteristics of commercial buildings.
  • Terminate updates to EIA’s International Energy Statistics.

Many other data services are cut:

Energy Analysis Capacity
Halt preparation of the 2012 edition of EIA’s International Energy Outlook.
Suspend further upgrades to the National Energy Modeling System (NEMS). NEMS is the
country’s preeminent tool for developing projections of U.S. energy production, consumption,
prices, and technologies and its results are widely used by policymakers, industry, and others
in making energy-related decisions. A multiyear project to replace aging NEMS components will
be halted.
Eliminate annual published inventory of Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States.
Limit responses to requests from policymakers for special analyses.
Energy Analysis Capacity
  • Halt preparation of the 2012 edition of EIA’s International Energy Outlook.
  • Suspend further upgrades to the National Energy Modeling System (NEMS). NEMS is the country’s preeminent tool for developing projections of U.S. energy production, consumption, prices, and technologies and its results are widely used by policymakers, industry, and others in making energy-related decisions. A multi-year project to replace aging NEMS components will be halted.
  • Eliminate annual published inventory of Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States.
  • Limit responses to requests from policymakers for special analyses.

http://gregor.us/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Full-EIA-Press-Release.pdf

This means that this website can no longer provide updates to the monthly crude oil graphs using EIA data. The astute reader  of this post is advised to save the latest set of files (up to December 2010) as a historic document.