Shutdown over, but energy data not flowing yet

The government shutdown is over, but new drilling permits and energy data won’t start flowing out of federal agencies right away. As furloughed workers return to jobs at the Interior and Energy Departments, they are being greeted by “to do” piles that only accumulated during their 16-day hiatus. And it seems, turning the government back “on” after a shutdown is hardly as easy as flipping a switch. The Energy Information Administration, for instance, was unable to push out a weekly natural gas inventory report this morning, even though the government had officially reopened hours earlier. The agency’s closely watched weekly crude stockpile report, due out Wednesday, also was not issued because of the shutdown. An EIA spokesman said a schedule for resuming the data reports would be announced later, but for Thursday, at least, the weekly petroleum status report and the weekly natural gas storage report would not be issued. Engineers at the Bureau of Land Management now will have to work through a larger backlog of drilling permit applications, after that work was halted two weeks ago.  The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead reported Wednesday that there is a backlog of more than 500 oil and gas drilling permits at the bureau’s North Dakota office, up from roughly 450 a month ago. North Dakota Petroleum Council Vice President Kari Cutting told The Forum that the BLM staff who “already struggle to keep up” now will “be that much further behind” thanks to the shutdown...more