U.s. Energy Information Administration August 2012 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

EIA has submitted a request to revise a currently-approved data collection under the provisions of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). EIA proposes changes to the data collection requirements for the Forms EIA-861, ``Annual Electric Power Industry Report,'' EIA-923, ``Power Plant Operations Report,'' and the proposed creation of the Form EIA-861S, ``Annual Electric Power Industry Report (Short).'' All collection instruments are under OMB Control Number 1905-0129. The Form EIA-861 proposal is to modify the survey frame from a census of approximately 3,300 entities to a sample of approximately 2,200 entities and to estimate the total sales, revenues, and customer counts by sector. The Form EIA-861S proposal will collect data from the approximately 1,100 respondents that will no longer report on the Form EIA-861. The Form EIA-861S will collect a limited amount of sales, revenue, and customer count data and, for certain respondents, data on time-based rate customers and advanced meter reading (Advanced Metering Infrastructure/Automatic Meter Reading). Once every 5 years, the Form EIA-861S respondents will be asked to complete the Form EIA-861 in lieu of Form EIA-861S for sampling methodology purposes. The Form EIA-923 proposal involves modifying the reporting requirements for only Schedule 2, which collects cost and quality data of fossil fuel purchases at electricity generating plants. The proposal is to raise the reporting threshold to 200 megawatts (MW) of nameplate capacity for power plants primarily fueled by natural gas, petroleum coke, distillate fuel oil, and residual fuel oil. EIA will remove the reporting requirement for self-produced and minor fuels, i.e., blast furnace gas, other manufactured gases, kerosene, jet fuel, propoane, and waste oils. The reporting threshold for coal plants will remain at 50 MW of nameplate capacity.

EIA has submitted an information collection request to the OMB for extension under the provisions of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995. The information collection requests a three-year extension of its Petroleum Marketing Program, OMB Control Number 1905-0174. The proposed collection will collect basic data necessary to meet EIA's legislative mandates as well as the needs of EIA's public and private customers. Data collected include costs, sales, prices, and distribution of crude oil and petroleum products. The data are used for analyses, publications, and multi-fuel reports. Respondents are refiners, first purchasers, gas plant operators, resellers/retailers, motor gasoline wholesalers, suppliers, distributors and importers. EIA intends to extend for three years the petroleum marketing survey forms listed below: