DOE sets ‘data analytics’ on inventory of oil firms

To systematize the audit and validation of oil firms’ inventories on next year’s round of excise tax hikes under the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) Act, the Department of Energy (DOE) said it will employ data analytics in scrutinizing report submissions of the industry players.

Excise taxes of petroleum products will be on an uptick again in 2019, and inventory submission at cut-off date of December 31, 2018 will be a repeated scenario for the oil companies at the start of the year.

This early though, Energy Assistant Secretary Leonido J. Pulido III indicated that “data analytics” and setting up of “market algorithm” will already aid them in their analysis of inventory reports.

“Another thing we are pushing for is, we will be asking in our budget for 2019 funds in order to develop data analytics – and we will also set up an algorithm that can make validation faster,” he said.

Data analytics would refer to extraction of data that will then be analyzed correspondingly to establish certain patterns of behavior in a particular market – in this case, it will be the deregulated downstream oil sector.

Such system could then be underpinned by algorithm – or having sets of information or data analysis processed through an information technology (IT) platform.

There had been some degree of struggle on the part of the DOE this year on its validation and analysis of inventory data courtesy of the TRAIN implementation.

Yet as already communicated to the industry players and the public, the DOE will avoid a replication of that plot next year; and also in the last phase of TRAIN tax hikes in year 2020.

With the propounded data analytics, Pulido said “it makes projections more accurate and it will really assure the public further that the DOE can clearly monitor all the prices of fuel products all the way to the retail level accurately.”

The energy official likewise noted that information on inventories of the oil companies shall be made accessible to the public via the envisioned IT portal.

“The IT-based validation is open for public access. It is currently our ‘budget call’ at DOE, so this will be part of our budget request,” Pulido added.

Among the key information being required by DOE to be submitted by the oil firms are those on: daily withdrawal records; sales invoices all the way up to the retail level (gasoline stations) as well as on their average daily demand.

The department admitted that it needs a definitive framework on how to process data for ease of its analysis and establishing market trends and patterns.

In the recent validation of TRAIN tax enforcements, the energy official claimed that DOE “has done everything it can to assure the public that the TRAIN was properly implemented as far as the excise tax rates are concerned.”