Glossary

Natural Gas Monthly, Dec, 2004

Aquifer Storage Field: A sub-surface facility for storing natural gas, consisting of water-bearing sands topped by an impermeable cap rock.

Balancing Item: Represents the difference between the sum of the components of natural gas supply and the sum of the components of natural gas disposition. These differences may be due to data reporting or survey coverage problems. Reporting problems include differences due to the net result of conversions of flow data metered at varying temperature and pressure bases and converted to a standard temperature and pressure base; the effect of variations in company accounting and billing practices; differences between billing cycle and calendar period time frames; and imbalances resulting from the merger of data reporting systems which vary in scope, format, definitions, and type of respondents. Survey problems include incomplete survey frames, problems in sampling design, or response problems.

Base (Cushion) Gas: The volume of gas needed as a permanent inventory to maintain adequate underground storage reservoir pressures and deliverability rates throughout the withdrawal season. All native gas is included in the base gas volume.

City-gate: A point or measuring station at which a gas distribution company receives gas from a pipeline company or transmission system.

Commercial Consumption: Gas used by nonmanufacturing establishments or agencies primarily engaged in the sale of goods or services such as hotels, restaurants, wholesale and retail stores and other service enterprises; and gas used by local, State and Federal agencies engaged in nonmanufacturing activities.

Depleted Storage Field: A sub-surface natural geological reservoir, usually a depleted oil or gas field, used for storing natural gas.

Dry Natural Gas Production: Marketed production less extraction loss.

Electric Power Sector: An energy-consuming sector that consists of electricity-only and combined heat and power (CHP) plants whose primary business is to sell electricity, or electricity and heat, to the public--i.e., North American Industry Classification System 22 plants. Combined heat and power plants that identify themselves as primarily in the commercial or industrial sectors are reported in those sectors.

Electric Power Consumption: Gas used as fuel in the electric power sector.

Electric Utility: A corporation, person, agency, authority, or other legal entity or instrumentality aligned with distribution facilities for delivery of electric energy for use primarily by the public. Included are investor-owned electric utilities, municipal and State utilities, Federal electric utilities, and rural electric cooperatives. A few entities that are tariff based and corporately aligned with companies that own distribution facilities are also included. Note: Due to the issuance of FERC Order 888 that required traditional electric utilities to functionally unbundle their generation, transmission, and distribution operations, "electric utility" currently has inconsistent interpretations from State to State.

Exports: Natural gas deliveries out of the continental United States and Alaska to foreign countries.

Extraction Loss: The reduction in volume of natural gas resulting from the removal of natural gas liquid constituents at natural gas processing plants.

Flared: The volume of gas burned in flares on the base site or at gas processing plants.

Gas Condensate Well: A gas well that produces from a gas reservoir containing considerable quantities of liquid hydrocarbons in the pentane and heavier range generally described as "condensate."

Gas Well: A well completed for the production of natural gas from one or more gas zones or reservoirs.

Gross Withdrawals: Full well stream volume, including all natural gas plant liquid and nonhydrocarbon gases, but excluding lease condensate. Also includes amounts delivered as royalty payments or consumed in field operations.

Heating Value: The average number of British thermal units per cubic foot of natural gas as determined from tests of fuel samples.

Imports: Natural gas received in the Continental United States (including Alaska) from a foreign country.

Industrial Consumption: Natural gas used for heat, power, or chemical feedstock by manufacturing establishments or those engaged in mining or other mineral extraction as well as consumers in agriculture, forestry, fisheries and construction.

Intransit Deliveries: Redeliveries to a foreign country of foreign gas received for transportation across U.S. territory and deliveries of U.S. gas to a foreign country for transportation across its territory and redelivery to the United States.

Intransit Receipts: Receipts of foreign gas for transportation across U.S. territory and redelivery to a foreign country and redeliveries to the United States of U.S. gas transported across foreign territory.

Lease and Plant Fuel: Natural gas used in well, field, lease operations and as fuel in natural gas processing plants.

Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG): Natural gas that has been liquefied by reducing its temperature to minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit at atmospheric pressure.