With the release by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of its 2018 Form 176 data, the APGA Benchmarking tool has been updated to include benchmarks for 2018. The tool has also been improved to include fourteen new benchmarks related to natural gas vehicles (NGV). The benchmarking program allows APGA members to compare themselves against peers in over 100 different metrics, including operational, financial, customer and now, NGVs. Members can compare themselves with the average of over 1,500 distribution systems in the database or to a self-selected peer group of systems. For example, a member could choose to compare its results with just other systems in the same state, or other municipal systems in the state, with other APGA member municipal systems in the state or with other systems of a similar size or a combination of these attributes. Data for the benchmarks is taken from publicly available databases published by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration’s (PHMSA) Distribution Annual Reports (Form 7100.1-1) and EIA Form 176, supplemented by data from APGA surveys.
The new NGV benchmarks include the total amount of natural gas that each operator reported delivering for use as automotive fuel in its annual EIA report, both in MCF and in dollars revenue and as the percent of total MCF and revenue from all gas delivered by the operator. It also lists the number of NGV customers, the number of NGVs owned and operated by the utility and the amount of gas consumed in utility NGVs.
The APGA benchmarking program currently includes comparable data for calendar years 2012 through 2018. The benchmarking program can be found at
benchmark.apga.org or under the Resources tab at
www.apga.org.
For questions on this article, please contact John Erickson of APGA staff by phone at 202-464-0834 or by email at
jerickson@apga.org.