September 14 was a big day for Canada's National Energy Board. It published a raft of statistics key to understanding the oil patch. But none of those statistics were particularly recent: March oil price figures, May crude export numbers and July natural gas imports and exports.
The long delays in energy data are in keeping with long-standing Canadian practice – and stand in direct contrast to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), which publishes most pertinent numbers on a weekly basis.
Now, the new head of the EIA has set a mandate to produce those U.S. numbers even more rapidly, using a logic that applies equally well to Canada. In fact, Adam Sieminski, who began as EAI administrator this summer after serving as chief energy economist for Deutsche Bank, says he would be interested in co-operating with Canada to provide better insights into the Canadian energy marketplace.
"This business is shifting around and changing rapidly," Mr. Sieminski said in an interview. "I think the data collection and analysis has got to keep pace with it, or the markets won't be as transparent as they should be. And transparency protects everybody, including consumers."
In the U.S., Mr. Sieminski has set a goal for the EIA to "improve our data collection and release so that we're being more relevant to today's markets."
But the slow pace of Canadian energy statistics has not escaped his notice. He referred to a recent conversation with the Canadian Energy Research Institute where "we were lamenting that Canadian data is not as easily and readily available as U.S. data on oil and natural gas."
He added: "obviously, the U.S. can't collect data from Canadian citizens and corporations, but if there was some way to cooperate with Ottawa on improving data flow, that would be fantastic."
In Canada, the private sector has begun to step in to fill the wide time gaps in data publication. But such data is only available to those with the considerable budgets to buy it.
The data problem in Canada is not just with the National Energy Board. Information collected by Alberta's Energy Resources Conservation Board also suffers delays. On Sept. 17, for instance, it published its latest drilling activity statistics, which included July numbers.
The importance of Canadian energy to the U.S. is one reason Mr. Sieminski is intrigued by the idea of getting better, and more timely, information from north of the border.
"Still a huge portion of our natural gas comes from Canada. There's electricity that comes into the U.S. from Canada. There's now talk of moving oil out of the Bakken [in North Dakota] and through pipeline systems that Enbridge runs – and it's possible that some of that oil might go in and out across the border," he said.
He added: "this idea of what can Canada and the U.S. do together in the data area is something I would find quite useful."
Nathan VanderKlippe