For a long time, I’ve contended that one piece of solving the puzzle of energy independence is getting to our own supply of oil and natural gas – supplies we have but are locked away by federal regulations.
An ancilliary benefit of domestic oil and natural gas exploration is the creation of thousands of new jobs. Hey, that’s not a bad idea when unemployment is 10 percent, you think? I know my friend Jane Van Ryan at API thinks it’s a good idea too, and she sent this along to me. Call it a hot tip if you will, I just call it common sense.
The Obama administration has missed an opportunity at its jobs summit by not actively engaging the oil and natural gas industry – an industry that supports 9.2 million American jobs and is poised to create hundreds of thousands of new jobs with the right public policies.
During a media teleconference held ahead of the White House jobs summit, API Chairman Larry Nichols and API President and CEO Jack Gerard outlined how the oil and natural industry – which represents 7.5 percent of GDP – is ready, willing and able to create new jobs and provide the energy that America needs to sustain a successful economic recovery.
“Clearly, the White House missed an opportunity to include one of the biggest employers and wealth creators in the nation,” said Nichols, who is chairman and CEO of Devon Energy Corp. “The gas and oil industry supports 9.2 million jobs. We know what it takes to create a job, and we know what it takes to preserve a job.”
Gerard added: “We are not asking for any handouts. We don’t need stimulus dollars or subsidies. We just need access to develop the resources we will need to fuel this economy, and create thousands of new jobs.”
“The American people have spoken on this topic clearly,” Gerard added. “In poll after poll, they said they want additional access to the nation’s resources. Congress heard the outcry, and lifted the moratoria on new offshore development. But a de facto moratorium has been put in place by this Interior Department.
“Access is essential to produce the energy this country needs.”
Gerard noted that the oil and gas industry is already one of the largest creators of green jobs. The industry invested $58.4 billion in carbon mitigation technologies between 2000 and 2008, more than any other private industries or the federal government. Using a measure by the Center for American Progress that 2 million jobs are created for each $100 billion invested, the oil and gas industry has created nearly 1.2 million green jobs.
In addition to providing access, Gerard and Nichols said policymakers should stop proposing policies that would kill American jobs. Specifically, they said new taxes and ill-conceived climate change proposals are job killers and discourage the development of domestic energy.
“Our industry does not operate in a vacuum,” Nichols said. “It is integrated with all other industries. Huge tax increases lessen our ability to create jobs. Our industry can’t prosper unless all the other industries, and the consumers, prosper.
“Higher taxes destroy jobs, and impair our economy.”
Last sentence first…got that right! But it’s no surprise that President Obama didn’t invite any oil or natural gas executives to his job summit because it doesn’t fit in with his template of so-called “green” jobs. Maybe he’d rather create jobs with his “stimulus” at six figures of our hard-earned tax money a pop.
Of course, the naysayers will say that this is old, dirty technology and we need to move on to new sources of energy. They talk about “peak oil”, which we have been at over most of the last century – at least until new finds push back the eventual day of reckoning. In fact, this year worldwide oil finds are at their best since 2000 because of new and better technology in finding and accessing supplies. On the other hand, so far I haven’t yet seen the car that runs on solar or wind technology – even the foreign cars still run on good old unleaded.
And the old saw about reducing our dependence on oil from unfriendly sources like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela? Well, drilling and finding sources here certainly leaves those countries free to make their money from someone else, doesn’t it? I like leaving my money in America as much as the next guy (although I grant that some of the oil companies selling domestically are foreign-owned) and isn’t the complaint by the greenies that we send so much of our money overseas to feed our oil habit? Sounds like problem solved to me.
But in this economy it all comes back to jobs. And it’s not just drilling and exploring – there’s also refining, transportation, and marketing necessary to get oil from well to gas tank and natural gas from recovery to your furnace (or to the power plant, as a number of electric generation facilities run on natural gas.) So a true jobs summit would not have excluded the oil and natural gas industry, which tells me President Obama wasn’t really as interested in creating jobs as he was creating a photo-op for himself and industrial leaders not in his doghouse.
There was a saying in the summer of 2008 when gasoline was $4 a gallon – “drill here, drill now, pay less.” We very easily could add a fourth two-word phrase to the saying: “create jobs.” What do we have to lose but maybe a couple percentage points off the unemployment rate? You know, that would get the jobless rate back to the 8% they promised when the stimulus was passed – and it wouldn’t cost the taxpayers a dime.
So President Obama and Congress: free up the energy companies and let them fuel our economic engine back up. The people of America who take the jobs created will thank you.
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