INSTITUTE INDEX: The overblown job creation claims for expanded offshore drilling
Claims being made about the job-creating potential of offshore oil and gas drilling fail to take into account the potential economic losses caused by damaged ecosystems. (Photo of oil from the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon disaster on a barrier island off the Louisiana coast by NOAA.)
Date on which President Trump signed an executive order directing the Interior Department to review and potentially rewrite the Obama administration's five-year plan that closed the Atlantic and other waters to offshore drilling through 2022: 4/28/2017
Number of new jobs President Trump claimed would be created by expanding offshore drilling to new areas: "countless"
Number of days after Trump signed the order that the American Petroleum Institute called for opening the Eastern Gulf of Mexico to drilling, citing among other reasons the job creation potential: 3
Number of jobs that the Republican Party is claiming would be created by opening up the Atlantic alone to drilling: nearly 280,000
Year in which a report by Texas-based Quest Offshore, commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute and the National Ocean Industries Association, arrived at that figure: 2013
Number of jobs the Quest report said Atlantic drilling would create in just North Carolina: 55,000
Year in which Douglas Wakeman, an economics professor at North Carolina's Meredith College, released an analysis of the Quest report that found its job claims were dubious: 2015
Number of times in its report that Quest specified what estimates of future oil prices it used, even though production depends on price: 0
Price a barrel of oil was selling for at the time Quest produced the report: $105.49
Price a barrel was selling for this week: around $48
Price at which production in high-cost areas falls off: $50
Between March 2015 and March 2016, amid plummeting oil prices, number of oil and gas jobs lost in just Louisiana: 10,000
According to a 2016 federal study, number by which the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon disaster reduced jobs in the Gulf of Mexico's seafood industry: up to 9,315
Total number of spills that have been reported from offshore drilling platforms and pipelines in U.S. waters from 2001 through 2015: 725
Total number of jobs along the Atlantic Coast alone that depend on healthy ocean ecosystems: nearly 1.4 million
Factor by which the number of U.S. jobs provided by ocean tourism and recreation exceeds those provided by offshore drilling: 12
Number of local businesses, chambers of commerce, tourism and other industry groups that are opposing offshore exploration and/or drilling in the Atlantic due to concerns about its negative economic impact: over 48,000
Number of times the Quest study considered potential job losses from offshore drilling: 0
(Click on figure to go to source.)
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Sue Sturgis
Sue is the former editorial director of Facing South and the Institute for Southern Studies.