Drill, Drill, Drill Jobs Plan: +1.4 Million Jobs, $800 Billion in Revenue, and Increased Energy Security

U.S. oil, gas jobs: Status Quo vs. Increased Development

With more than 22 million Americans unemployed (14 million) or working-part time and unable to find full-time employment (8.5 million), there is obviously nothing more important economically today than job creation.  The issue of jobs will likely be one of the main topics at the Republican debate tonight, and it will President Obama's only topic tomorrow night when he addresses a joint session of Congress and outlines his new jobs programs that will cost $300 billion for increased government spending and tax cuts.  How many jobs will be created from Obama's plan remains to be seen, but even if it optimistically (and unrealistically) created 1 million new jobs, that would come at a very expensive cost of $300,000 per job - not such a good deal.

Well, what if we could create 1 million new jobs in the U.S. over the next seven years by 2018, and 1.4 million total new jobs by 2030 without spending a dollar of taxpayer money?  In fact, what if the creation of those new jobs actually generated hundreds of billions of dollars of additional government revenue ($800 billion by 2030).  Sound too good to be true?

Those are the estimates of job creation and increased government revenues that would result from: a) opening access in key regions of the U.S. to oil and natural gas development that are currently closed, b) returning to historical levels of oil and gas development for existing U.S. regions (onshore U.S., the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska) and c) opening the Keystone XL pipeline and other potential Canada-to-U.S. oil pipelines, according to a new report released today titled "U.S. Supply Forecast and Potential Jobs and Economic Impacts (2012-2030)."

The study was conducted by Scotland-based Wood Mackenzie Energy Consulting for the American Petroleum Institute (API), see the API press release here and the full report here.

MP: The chart above graphically shows the net job gains from increased domestic energy development compared to maintaining the current projected levels of domestic energy development through 2030.  Here's one way to understand the impact of those new jobs on the U.S. economy: If we had 1 million of those jobs today, it would lower the U.S. jobless rates from 9.1% down to 8.4% and if we 1.4 million jobs, it would lower the rate down to 8.2%.

When you can add a million or more jobs to the U.S. economy, while at the same time generate hundreds of billions of revenue and also increase America's energy security as an additional bonus, I think you've got a jobs package that will dominate anything that we'll hear about tomorrow night.