API Chief Economist John Felmy told reporters this morning that oil and gas production was rising, creating new jobs, even as the overall economy was weakening. He said more oil and gas development could help jobs and the economy, decrease imports, and add to our nation's energy supplies: "The industry is investing. It's expanding. It's producing more oil and natural gas. It's hiring. It's added thousands of jobs this year, and, since the recession began, it has added more than 86,000 jobs. In contrast, the economy as a whole has lost five million, according to numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
"The oil and gas success story has helped workers and the economy, but it could help even more if we encouraged more development through more farsighted energy policies. We could be producing more, reducing imports more, and putting more people to work. There's a lot of potential because we still import half our oil at an annual cost of hundreds of billions of dollars.
"We're pleased the White House has endorsed an all-of-the-above energy strategy. But these are critical times for our economy, and we need more than an endorsement. We need leadership. We need leadership that would give meaning to the words "all-of-the-above,leadership that would take action unleashing the positive benefits of more development, leadership that would help Americans sooner rather than later.
"That means increasing access, including an expansion of Interior's latest offshore five-year plan. It means approving the Keystone XL pipeline before the election, not next year or whenever. It means making real changes in regulatory policy.
API represents more than 500 oil and natural gas companies, leaders of a technology-driven industry that supplies most of America's energy, supports 9.2 million U.S. jobs and 7.7 percent of the U.S. economy, delivers more than $86 million a day in revenue to our government, and, since 2000, has invested more than $2 trillion in U.S. capital projects to advance all forms of energy, including alternatives.
Source: API