Innovative thinkers

When the precursor to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) was established in 1976, people in this country, and elsewhere, lived in an “information-poor world.” If you wanted domestic oil production numbers, you might not have known where to look for answers. Even if you did know where to look, you might not have trusted the response you got.

But, that was then. Now we live in an information-rich world, where a single Internet search returns so many millions of “answers” that finding useful, trustworthy information can be daunting. Today, thanks, in part, to the efforts of Charlie Whitmore, the EIA has a powerful information-disseminating tool on its own “Today in Energy” webpage, known as “TIE” for short. While the agency is tasked with collecting, disseminating, evaluating and analyzing energy-related information, TIE gives readers a more, relatable look at the issues.

As a former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission staffer, and senior advisor to the TIE staff, Whitmore said the idea for a more frequently updated source of information within the EIA took form during his interactions with former EIA Administrator Richard Newell. As head of the agency, Newell liked to have a “dashboard” prepared each day for the Secretary of Energy and the White House. As staffers continued to put more into these daily reports, the move to producing longer-form, stories was a natural step. Newell later gave the go-ahead, and, soon, TIE was launched on the front page of the EIA website.

These days, TIE offers a daily stream of topical stories covering a multitude of areas within the energy landscape. What began as a method of recapping data for internal distribution has now become a reference for industry experts who are crunched for time, but would still like to be exposed to things outside their area of specialization.

 And, just like the energy industry in which these expert professionals work, things are never stale in the world of TIE. Whitmore said the page often works as a test bed for new ideas, like animated graphics, for the entire digital realm of the EIA.

Recently, said Whitmore, the TIE team has incorporated day-ahead energy pricing information on the page, so that users can compare data all in one place. He added that the successful launch of such projects within the TIE space has demonstrated that the EIA has the potential to play a larger part in the current energy development landscape.

This willingness to test-run new, different concepts has made possible other agency projects, like a proposed rig and well productivity report. The report, which is still in development, would mean that data across all major basins would be collected, and the question of rig count versus productivity could be explored.

Another function poised for expansion is what Whitmore called “response to extraordinary events,” in which the agency, on multiple levels, would have the ability to disseminate timely, accurate information to communities experiencing natural disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes, heat waves and cold snaps. The near-real-time release of information, along with more in-depth post-mortems on major events impacting energy, is an ongoing TIE—and EIA—goal.

Whether TIE and the agency are looking to show where energy in the U.S. has been, is going or is currently, Whitmore said the most important thing is a continued sense of curiosity. As long as people want to know more than they do today, there will be a space for TIE and the invaluable information it provides.