EIA — U.S. Energy Information Administration

The official US energy data: petroleum, natural gas, electricity, coal, renewables, nuclear, total energy, international energy. Production, consumption, prices, reserves, imports/exports — at national, state, and (for electricity) plant level. Free, requires a free API key.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1476+ live data sources.

Why this matters for AI agents

For energy questions — "what's the price of natural gas?", "how much electricity comes from solar?", "are gasoline prices rising?" — EIA is the source. Government-grade data, no commercial markup. Pair with FRED for energy-related macro indicators and NOAA for energy-relevant weather context.

Common flows:

Spot prices. "What's WTI crude trading at?" → crude oil spot price series.
State electricity mix. "What % of California electricity is solar?" → state-level generation by source.
Retail gasoline. "Average price for a gallon last week?" → weekly retail prices.
Natural gas storage. "How much working gas in storage?" → weekly EIA-915 reports.

Auth

EIA Open Data API requires a free key from https://www.eia.gov/opendata/register.php. Pass via _apiKey. Generous rate limits.

Major datasets

Dataset	Cadence	Use
Petroleum & Other Liquids	Weekly / monthly	Crude oil prices, gasoline, distillates, OPEC
Natural Gas	Weekly storage, monthly production	Pricing, storage, consumption
Electricity	Monthly	Generation by fuel, retail rates by state
Coal	Monthly / annual	Mining, prices, exports
Renewable & Alternative Fuels	Monthly	Solar, wind, biofuels, electric vehicle charging
Total Energy / Annual Energy Outlook	Annual	Long-term forecasts

Series IDs

EIA series follow dataset_id.frequency.region.product patterns. Examples:

PET.RWTC.D — WTI crude, daily
NG.RNGC1.D — Natural gas Henry Hub, daily
ELEC.GEN.SUN-CA-99.M — California solar generation, monthly
PET.EMM_EPMR_PTE_NUS_DPG.W — US weekly average regular gasoline price

Use the eia_search tool to find IDs rather than constructing them manually.

Common pitfalls

Reporting lag varies. Petroleum prices update weekly with ~3-day lag. Electricity generation is monthly with ~2-month lag. Don't assume "current" matches across datasets.
Heat content vs volume. Natural gas reported in BCF (billion cubic feet), MMcf, and energy units (BTU, MMBtu). Conversions matter for cross-fuel comparison.
Net vs gross generation. Power-plant generation has subtle definitions. "Net" subtracts plant-internal use. EIA mostly publishes net. Don't double-count.
State electricity by primary mover. EIA's state-level mix is by primary mover (steam turbine, combined cycle, etc.) AND fuel — same plant can have multiple categorizations. Aggregate to the level your question requires.
Forecasts are scenarios. AEO (Annual Energy Outlook) is a reference-case projection plus side-cases. Don't treat reference case as "what will happen."
No market-real-time prices. EIA spot prices are official end-of-day; for intra-day market prices you need a commercial feed, not EIA.

Quick Start

Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "eia": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/eia/mcp"
    }
  }
}

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/eia/mcp returns the tools in the table above plus the shared Pipeworx meta-tools — ask_pipeworx, discover_tools, search_within, remember/recall and the rest of the gateway-wide set. So the tool count you see is larger than this table: a single-pack endpoint currently lists roughly 30 shared tools alongside the pack's own. The connection's initialize response states its exact scope, and is the authoritative answer for a given day.

This is deliberate, not multiplexing by accident. The meta-tools are what let a scoped connection answer a question this pack does not cover — via ask_pipeworx, which routes across the whole catalog — without you adding a second MCP server. There is currently no way to mount a pack endpoint without them; if the extra schemas cost you more context than the routing is worth, connect to the full gateway once rather than to several pack endpoints.

Or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway to get every pack's tools listed directly, instead of just this one's:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pipeworx": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1476+ data sources. The only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx reaches all of them from either one.

Using with ask_pipeworx

Instead of calling tools directly, you can ask questions in plain English — this works on the pack endpoint above as well as on the full gateway:

ask_pipeworx({ question: "your question about Eia data" })

The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.

License

MIT

Eia