Dominion Discloses Error In Natural Gas Storage Report Last Month
RICHMOND, Va. — Dominion (NYSE: D) said today that it
inadvertently submitted an outdated weekly report on Nov. 22 to the U.S. Energy
Information Administration in a routine weekly update of Dominion’s underground
natural gas storage levels.
Dominion submitted the correct report within 30 minutes of
a request by EIA personnel to reaffirm its data submission. The EIA request
came on Nov. 24, the day the agency released a broader weekly national summary
of the nation’s total underground natural gas storage levels for the week
ending Nov. 19.
Dominion is cooperating with inquiries by the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Dominion has added safeguards to the procedures for personnel
responsible for submitting the company’s weekly storage reports to EIA.
Dominion submits the confidential report each Monday to EIA
to disclose the level of natural gas in storage the preceding week.
Dominion’s investigation found that its natural gas
storage personnel prepared an accurate report of Dominion’s storage levels
for the week ending Nov. 19 for submission to EIA. Dominion, following its customary
procedures, also accurately posted the prior-week storage levels of its affiliate
Dominion Transmission, Inc. on its web site’s electronic bulletin board
on Nov. 22.
However, the clerical worker responsible for submitting the
storage report to EIA inadvertently submitted a duplicate of a Dominion weekly
storage report that had been submitted previously to EIA on Sept. 27. That report
indicated a report period for the week ending Sept. 24 and reflected storage
levels of about 30 billion cubic feet less natural gas in the Dominion underground
storage system than was actually in the company’s system for the week
ending Nov. 19. The erroneous weekly report submitted to EIA was clearly dated.
EIA is responsible under existing federal policies for disclosing
national storage data and revisions on a uniform and coordinated basis.
Among newly implemented procedural safeguards at Dominion,
management-level personnel will execute transmission of the weekly storage data
to EIA, and a separate senior-level manager will contact EIA personnel after
the data are submitted to verify the report’s content. While the error
occurred with the transmission of the data, Dominion is also strengthening its
data verification procedures under a system of redundant review by management.
The company confirmed that previous natural gas storage data submissions to
the EIA have been accurately and properly compiled and submitted.
Dominion has determined that the company did not benefit from
having information about the inadvertent submission of the September report.
In a related matter, Dominion also determined that an employee
who handles storage data believed she was speaking accurately when she told
Gas Daily on Nov. 29, in response to an inquiry, that the storage numbers submitted
by Dominion were correct. At the time she made the statement, the employee did
not know that the outdated storage report had been inadvertently submitted to
EIA rather than the accurate Nov. 22 report. The employee was quoted by the
publication several days later.
