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TIPSHEET: Perry’s Latest Video Touts Oil-Funded Job Statistics to Promote “Oil Above All” Energy Plan

Presidential candidate Rick Perry’s latest campaign video touts that his recently announced energy plan would “kickstart the economic growth of this country and create 1.2 million jobs… I offer a plan that will create more than a million good-paying American jobs across every sector of the economy.” Perry’s energy plan would expand risky oil drilling on federal lands and offshore, roll back clean air protections and end many incentives for development of renewable energy.

THE FACTS:

Studies claiming that lifting regulation and expanding oil and gas drilling will create over a million jobs have been funded by oil companies.

• The American Energy Alliance funded a study by Joseph R. Mason in February 2009 that claimed lifting regulations and expanding oil and gas drilling would create $1.2 million jobs.  The president of the American Energy Alliance is Thomas Pyle, a former lobbyist for Koch Industries and the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association.  [The Economic Contribution of Increased Offshore Oil Exploration and Production to Regional and National Economies, February 2009; American Energy Alliance; Center for Responsive Politics]

• The American Petroleum Institute funded a study that projected 1.4 million jobs from easing regulations and dropping moratoriums.  [New York Times, 9/7/11]

The same studies project that it will take almost a decade for those jobs to appear.

• According to Joseph Mason, author of the American Energy Alliance study, the 1.2 million jobs won’t be created for another seven years. [Testimony of Dr. Joseph R. Mason at House Natural Resources Committee Hearing, 4/6/11]

• The API study also projects that job creation would take at least seven years.  [New York Times, 9/7/11]

These studies include over half a million indirectly created and induced jobs- many of which aren’t exactly “good-paying.”

• According to the Washington Post:  “But many economists say that the API has exaggerated the number of jobs linked to the oil and gas industry by including direct and indirect jobs (such as steel suppliers), and a seldom-used category known as ‘induced’ jobs that API says covers everything from valets to day-care providers, from librarians to rocket scientists.  Moreover, the single biggest category of people working directly for the petroleum industry is cashiers at gasoline stations and stations with convenience stores — 533,830 of them, according to the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. Yet hardly any of those cashiers pump gas, check engines or inflate tires; mostly they ring up sales of snacks, not gasoline. According to the Labor Department, their median hourly wage is a meager $8.68…The ad cites a study by Wood Mackenzie, a consulting firm hired by API. Scott Mitchell, who oversaw the study as head of North America upstream research at Wood Mackenzie, said that only a third of the 1.4 million positions created would go to people working directly for the petroleum industry and that the rest would be indirect and induced jobs.”  [Washington Post, 10/10/11]

Big Oil has already contributed over $11 million to Rick Perry’s campaigns, and increased oil and gas production won’t just continue to fill Perry’s campaign coffers but also his personal bank account. 

• The oil and gas industry has been Rick Perry’s top source of campaign cash, contributing an astronomical $11,549,801.  Watchdog group Texans for Public Justice estimates that Perry has raised nearly $14 million altogether “from individuals and committees associated with energy, natural resource extraction and waste industries” between 2001 and 2010.  [Institute for Money in State Politics; Politico, 8/10/11]

• According to his personal financial disclosures, Perry is invested in Conoco Phillips, Chevron, MDU Resources and MKS Natural Gas.  [Texas Ethics Commission, 8/30/11]