API's Gerard: Oil and Gas Industry Subsidies are a Myth

In a briefing with reporters today, American Petroleum Institute President Jack Gerard said the common belief that the oil and gas industry receives subsidies is false.

Gerard:

We continue to hear about the need to eliminate “subsidies” for the industry. The industry receives not one subsidy, and it is one of the largest contributors of revenue to our government of any industry in America. The oil and natural gas industry doesn’t get the guaranteed loans made famous by the Solyndra affair, for example. It takes tax deductions the same or similar to what all other American companies get to recover their costs of doing business.

Gerard criticized the Obama administration for rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline plan and lack of movement on development leases in offshore fields and federal lands.

Gerard:

Certainly, it’s better to hear the administration talk about more oil and natural gas development than to hear it call oil “yesterday’s” energy, as the president did during last year’s State of the Union address.

But words are not leadership if not followed by the right actions. We don’t know whether the president is committed to more domestic development and reasonable energy policies or is still harboring the idea he and his secretary of energy expressed before the election that higher gasoline prices might actually make sense as a part of our national energy policy because they would make us more energy efficient and encourage green energy.

A full transcript of the speech can be found here.