The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) has delayed the publication of a handful of reports and is proposing the cancellation of another after losing about 30pc of its staff since President Donald Trump began his second term.

The delays to reports on uranium prices, solar panel shipments and biofuels are the latest sign of strain at the agency since it lost more than 100 staff from voluntary buyouts and other cuts pursued by the Trump administration. Earlier this year, EIA dropped plans to release its International Energy Outlook this year because of a loss of key staff.

Oil and gas producers, utility executives, traders, regulators, analyts and others often rely on data and reports from the EIA, an independent agency that is responsible for collecting and analyzing energy data. EIA declined to comment on whether staffing affected the timing of its reports, but said it was committed to publishing reliable data.

"We remain committed to meeting high statistical standards, and we will not publish any data or analysis that doesn't meet those standards," EIA said.

An annual report on uranium purchases and prices that since 1996 had been published every June is now set for release in September, according to the agency's website. EIA's monthly biofuels capacity and feedstocks report, set for release on 29 August with data from June, should be coming out in September, an agency official said.

EIA has yet to release a monthly report on solar photovoltaic modules since last December, and today the agency proposed canceling the report entirely. The last version of the report showed that shipments of solar modules increased to a peak wattage of 33GW in 2023, a sixfold increase to 2013, while the price per peak watt had fallen in half.

"EIA has determined that the value of the data collected by the survey no longer exceeds the burden of collecting and publishing it," the agency said in a formal notice requesting comment on its plan to end the report.

By Chris Knight