Energy Information Agency (EIA) Will Curtail Much Of What It Does

Link here.

Looks like the agency contracted out much of what it produced.

The agency's budget was cut 14 percent.

According to the agency, due to the cutbacks, the agency will:

• Not prepare or publish US oil and gas reserves data for 2011
• Curtail efforts to understand linkages between physical energy markets and financial trading (was a Justice Department Task Force just established to do this?)
• Suspend analysis of market impacts of planned refinery outages
• Suspend reporting on the market impacts of of planned refinery outages
• Suspend collection of monthly state-level data on wholesale prices of petroleum products
• Suspend dissemination of monthly state-level date on wholesale prices of petroleum products
• Halt preparation of annual petroleum marketing data report
• Halt publication of annual petroleum marketing data report
• Suspend auditing of data submitted by oil and gas companies
• Suspend reporting on 2010 financial performance of oil and gas companies
• Cut information data collection in electricity, renewables, and coal data 
• Cut consumption, efficiency and energy information activities
• Cut its energy analysis capacity
• Cut live telephone support at its customer contact center

These are just the initial steps.

The only question I have is: exactly what will the agency be doing? It is still budgeted at 86% of its historic levels.

Physicians and hospitals are generally reimbursed at a level less than this for Medicare patients.

Does the second item on the list, "curtail efforts to understand linkages between physical energy markets and financial trading" relate to recent task force set up to look into fraud and speculation regarding the price of oil? Something tells me it's one and the same. If these are the one and the same (one by the EIA and one by the Justice Department), it seems appropriate that both do not need to be funded. Based on previous studies, one can argue whether even another study is required but that discussion is for another day.

But again, when I look at this list, two things come to mind immediately: a) exactly what will the EIA be doing; and, b) how much of this is outsourced contract work and how much is accomplished by in-house government employees?