EIA-857 Cognitive Testing

	U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY	Form Approved
	ENERGY INFORMATION ADMINISTRATION	OMB No. 1905-0175
	Washington, DC 20585	Expiration Date: 12/31/2011

MONTHLY REPORT OF NATURAL GAS PURCHASES AND DELIVERIES TO CONSUMERS

FORM EIA-857

INSTRUCTIONS

PURPOSE

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) Form EIA-857, “Monthly Report of Natural Gas Purchases and Deliveries to Consumers,” is designed to collect data on the quantity and cost of natural gas delivered to distribution systems and the quantity and revenue of natural gas delivered to end-use consumers by market sector, on a monthly basis by State. The data appear in the EIA publications, Monthly Energy Review, Natural Gas Annual, and Natural Gas Monthly.

REPORTING REQUIREMENTS

Reports must be completed by all companies selected to submit the Form EIA-857. These companies were statistically selected by EIA from a list of all companies in the United States that deliver natural gas to consumers, including pipeline companies that serve consumers directly. The selection provides a representative sample of natural gas deliveries in the various States and the District of Columbia.

Respondents that were selected to report in more than one State must submit a separate report for each State. A unique identification number has been provided for each State. Respondents should only report for the States in which they were selected even if they serve consumers in other States as well.

WHEN TO REPORT

Form EIA-857 must be filed with EIA, on or before the 30^th calendar day after the end of the report month. When the 30th day falls on a weekend or national holiday, the reports are to be filed by the next business day.

HOW TO REPORT

Instructions on where to report via mail, fax, secure file transfer, or email are printed on Part 2 of Form EIA-857.

SECURE FILE TRANSFER

Forms may be submitted through the Secure File Transfer System. The secure hypertext transfer protocol (HTTPS) is an industry standard method to send information over the web using a secure, encrypted process. All information is protected by 128-bit encryption to maintain the privacy and confidentiality of transmitted data. The Secure File Transfer System may be accessed through the following web address: https://signon.eia.doe.gov/upload/noticeoog.jsp.

COPIES OF THE SURVEY FORM AND INSTRUCTIONS

Copies in portable document format (PDF) and spreadsheet format (XLS) are available on EIA's website at:

www.eia.doe.gov/oil_gas/natural_gas/survey_forms/nat_survey_forms.html

You can also access the materials by following these steps:

1. Go to EIA's website at 

   1. Click on the Natural Gas category (this takes you to EIA's natural gas information page).

   2. Click on the Survey Forms link located in the reference box in the lower right corner.

2. Select the materials you want.

Files must be saved to your personal computer. Data cannot be entered interactively on the website.

GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS

Complete only those Parts and data elements applicable to your operations. Leave all other spaces blank. No data are to be entered in the shaded areas or spaces.

Information reported is intended to represent gas physically received or delivered during the report month.

All purchase and delivery transactions should be reported when and where the gas physically enters or leaves your company’s system.

If necessary, in order to file by the due date, complete the report based upon estimates. Estimated data items should be denoted by placing an “e” immediately after the item.

Negative values are not acceptable.

Resubmissions of reports are not required unless actual or corrected data vary more than plus (+) or minus (-) 4 percent from the data previously reported. This includes, prior period adjustments, which should be filed as resubmissions for the months to which the adjustments were made. If company records do not permit allocation of adjustments to the appropriate months, the adjustments should be reported in the area provided for comments.

All respondents should review forms prior to submission. A comment section on the form is provided for addressing data anomalies, changes in business organization, changes in status of business operation, or any other pertinent information that may affect the processing of your Form EIA- 857.

SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS

PART 1: RESPONDENT IDENTIFICATION

Please provide up-to-date company information.

EIA ID Number: Complete the 10-digit identification number assigned by EIA. Companies operating in more than one State should note that a unique number has been assigned for operations in each State. In the event an identification number has not been assigned, leave the space blank and contact the EIA at (877) 800-5261, a number will then be assigned by the EIA.

Resubmission: Check the box if report is a revised report. If the report is an original, leave this space blank.

Company Name: Enter the company name.

Contact Information: Enter the current contact information.

PART 2: SUBMISSION INFORMATION

Provides information for the four options available for submitting your completed Form EIA-857: (1) mail; (2) fax; (3) email; and (4) Secure File Transfer.

Part 3: NATURAL GAS PURCHASES AND DELIVERIES TO CONSUMERS

Purchased Gas Received in Distribution Service Area (City Gate) (item 1.0):

Report the total volume and cost, including taxes, of purchased gas received in your distribution service area during the month. If your suppliers do not bill on a calendar month basis, base your report on the billing periods most nearly matching the designated report month. Volumes should represent all gas physically received for sale and delivery to consumers, whether purchased from pipeline companies, marketers, brokers, producers or other sources, or exchange gas, or company-owned gas received from storage.

Costs should represent the total cost of those volumes, including any and all demand charges, commodity charges, monthly minimum bill and/or take-or-pay charges, surcharges, refunds in the form of reduced charges, charges incidental to underground storage of company-owned gas, and transportation charges paid or incurred to deliver gas to your distribution service area.

Net gains or losses associated with financial hedges are to be included for the report month in which the gas associated with the hedge is received.

Only report receipts of gas in your distribution service area during the report period and for which full delivered costs, including any separately stated transportation cost, are regularly recorded. The data collected are not intended to represent, and will not be portrayed as representing, the total cost of gas sold during the report month.

Respondents such as producers and pipeline companies, who use transportation or transmission system supply to provide service to consumers directly from their lines, for which delivered costs are not separately recorded, should enter “NR” for Not Recorded and briefly describe their operations in the area provided for comments on their initial report.

Respondents with a contiguous distribution service area extending across States lines should report purchased gas information only on the reports for the States in which the gas was actually received.

Gas purchased for storage, except for storage in your own storage reservoirs within your distribution service area, should be excluded at the time of its purchase. The volumes and associated costs (including net gains or losses from financial hedges) are to be reported when the gas is withdrawn from storage and transported to the distribution area for sale and delivery to consumers. The value then should include transportation and storage costs as well as the commodity cost.

Lump sum refunds received or lump sum minimum take, take-or-pay, or similar charges paid for prior period receipts should be excluded from Part 3 but described in the area provided for comments. Only total amounts received or paid need to be reported in the comments section. Prior reports need not be revised to reflect such sums.

Total Sendout of Gas Owned and Not Owned (Sendout) (item 2.0):

Report total system sendout to end-use customers during the report month, excluding injections to storage facilities. Include all volumes dispatched out of the service territory during the report month. The sum of deliveries to the sectors reported on lines 3 through 12 are not required to match the system sendout because the billing cycles may preclude the measurement of the sector-level sendout data.

Special provision for pipelines TBD

Natural Gas Deliveries (items 3 through 12)

Report the number of customers, volumes sold and delivered directly to end-use consumers and the revenues received. Report separately for natural gas that you own (items 3 through 7) and for natural gas that you do not own (items 8 through 12).

Volume and Revenue:

Residential and Commercial (Lines 3-4 and 8-9):

Reported volumes and revenues should reflect total usage by sector. Total usage is the sum of billing cycles or meter readings during the report month. Volumes and their corresponding revenues should reflect approximately one month’s worth of usage. If meters or bills are calculated less frequently than a monthly basis, please estimate volumes and revenues for a thirty day period,

For example if a particular customers meter is read on the 10^th business day of every month the meter reading capturing usage from approximately June 15^th – July 15^th should be used to report July’s volume.

Industrial and Electric Power (Lines 5-6 and 10-11):

In these sectors there are more frequent billing cycles and/or meter reads which should allow sector data to reflect the true calendar month usage. For these lines report sector totals that align with the calendar month to the extent possible.

Revenue:

The revenue reported should be the monetary income corresponding to the billing cycle and volume reported for that sector. It should include gross revenues, all system charges or minimum bill amounts, commodity charges, taxes, surcharges, adjustments or other charges billed for the gas delivered. Amounts refunded in the form of reduced bills should be reflected. Refunds to consumers in the form of check refunds should be excluded but the total refunded should be reported in the area provided for comments. For customers on level payment, deferred payment, or similar plans, amounts ultimately to be paid for the volumes, delivered should be reported. In the event your regularly maintained records do not include all charges for which customers are billed, for example local sales taxes, provide a comment of your initial submission explaining the type of charges excluded in the area provided for comments. Net gains or losses associated with financial hedges are to be included for the report month in which the gas associated with the hedge is delivered. All revenue values are to be rounded to the nearest whole number in dollars.

Note: Pipeline companies are not required to provide revenue data for deliveries of gas that they do not own.

Classification of Consumers

Consumers should be classified by category in accordance with the definitions provided below.

The size of an operation does not affect consumer classification. Large commercial operations should be classified as commercial, not industrial. Likewise, small industrial operations should be classified as industrial, not commercial.

Multiple-use or combination consumers such as apartment buildings with commercial establishments, retail stores with attached dwellings, or industrial plants with on-site office space or buildings served from a common meter are to be classified based upon the predominate volumetric usage. If certain categories, e.g., residential and commercial, are carried on a combined basis in your accounts, please provide your best estimate of the information for each category separately. Report deliveries directly to your company-owned commercial, industrial, or electric power facilities in the appropriate category.

Deliveries to end-use consumers are to be reported based on the following definitions:

Residential: An energy-consuming sector that consists of living quarters for private households. Common uses of energy associated with this sector include space heating, water heating, air conditioning, lighting, refrigeration and cooking. The residential sector includes mobile homes and apartment buildings (whether privately owned or publicly subsidized) and excludes institutional living quarters.

Commercial: An energy-consuming sector that consists of service-providing facilities and equipment of: businesses; Federal, State, and local governments; and other private and public organizations, such as religious, social, or fraternal groups. The commercial sector includes institutional living quarters. It also includes sewage treatment facilities. Common uses of energy associated with this sector include space heating, water heating, air conditioning, lighting, refrigeration, cooking, and running a wide variety of other equipment. Note: This sector includes generators that produce electricity and/or useful thermal output primarily to support the activities of the above-mentioned commercial establishments. Vehicle fuel and distribution company use are not to be included in the commercial sector.

Industrial: An energy-consuming sector that consists of all facilities and equipment used for producing, processing, or assembling goods. The industrial sector encompasses the following types of activity: manufacturing (North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes 31-33); agriculture, forestry, and fishing and hunting; mining, including oil and gas extraction; and construction. Overall energy use in this sector is largely for process heat and powering machinery, with lesser amounts used for facility heating. Natural gas is also used as raw material inputs to manufactured products. Note: This sector includes generators that produce electricity and/or useful thermal output primarily to support the above-mentioned industrial activities.

Electric power: An energy-consuming sector that consists of electricity-only plants and combined heat and power (CHP) plants, whose primary business is to sell electricity, or electricity and heat, to the public -- i.e., NAICS 22 plants

Other (not included in above categories; specify type): This category is only to be used for service provided directly to consumers for which you are uncertain of the correct category from among residential, commercial, industrial, and electric power. Please use the space provided to specify the type of delivery you report here.

Note: Vehicle fuel is not to be reported on Form EIA-857.

How to Report on Type of Consumer on Form EIA-857

Master-metered apartments Residential

Mobile homes Residential

Multi-family dwellings, individually metered Residential

Single-family dwellings Residential

Churches and hospitals Commercial

Government (local, State and Federal) agencies Commercial

Hotels Commercial

Non-manufacturing military installations Commercial

Restaurants Commercial

Retail stores Commercial

Schools and universities Commercial

Wholesale stores Commercial

Agriculture, forestry and fisheries Industrial Mining (including oil and gas extraction) Industrial

Manufacturing Industrial

Regulated electric utilities Electric

Power

Nonregulated electricity generators Electric

Power

Heat content of gas delivered to customers (Btu/cu. ft.)

The average heat content (Btu) should be computed by summing the total Btu delivered each month (volume delivered directly to consumers multiplied by average Btu content per unit volume) and dividing by the total volume delivered directly to consumers during that month. The average Btu content for each month should be that used for billing purposes whether billing was on a therm (100,000 Btu) or decatherm (1,000,000 Btu) basis. The value for heat content is expected to be in the range of 900 to 1200 Btu/cu. ft.

If billing was on a volumetric basis and your company did not measure the Btu content, contact your supplier for the information. If the Btu content was not measured at any point, enter a "U" for Unknown.

PROVISIONS REGARDING CONFIDENTIALITY OF INFORMATION

Information reported on Form EIA-857 will be protected and not disclosed to the public to the extent that it satisfies the criteria for exemption under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. §552, the DOE regulations, 10 C.F.R. §1004.11, implementing the FOIA, and the Trade Secrets Act, 18 U.S.C. §1905. The EIA will protect your information in accordance with its confidentiality and security policies and procedures.

The Federal Energy Administration Act requires the EIA to provide company-specific data to other Federal agencies when requested for official use. The information reported on this form may also be made available, upon request, to another component of the Department of Energy (DOE); or to any Committee of Congress, the General Accounting Office, or other Federal agencies authorized by law to receive such information. A court of competent jurisdiction may obtain this information in response to an order. The information may be used for any nonstatistical purposes such as administrative, regulatory, law enforcement, or adjudicatory purposes.

Disclosure limitation procedures are not applied to the statistical data published from EIA-857 survey information. Thus, there may be some statistics that are based on data from fewer than three respondents, or that are dominated by data from one or two large respondents. In these cases, it may be possible for a knowledgeable person to estimate the information reported by a specific respondent.

SANCTIONS

The timely submission of Form EIA-857 by those required to report is mandatory under Section 13(b) of the Federal Energy Administration Act of 1974 (FEA Act) (Public Law 93-275), as amended. Failure to respond may result in a civil penalty of not more than $2,750 each day for each violation, or a fine of not more than $5,000 each day for each willful violation. The government may bring a civil action to prohibit reporting violations, which may result in a temporary restraining order or a preliminary or permanent injunction without bond. In such civil action, the court may also issue mandatory injunctions commanding any person to comply with these reporting requirements.

FILING FORMS WITH FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AND ESTIMATED REPORTING BURDEN

Respondents are not required to file or reply to any Federal collection of information unless it has a valid OMB control number. Public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated to average 3.5 hours per response, including the time of reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden, to: Energy Information Administration, Statistics and Methods Group, EI-70, 1000 Independence Avenue, S.W., Washington, DC 20585; and to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and Budget, Washington, DC 20503.

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