American Oil and Gas Reporter - January 2015 - 195

The Presidential Papers
Liaison Committee of
Cooperating
Oil & Gas Associations
MIKE ELYEA
Senior Vice President
Burk Royalty Co.
Wichita Falls, Tx.

FROM THE CHAIRMAN
I am grateful for this opportunity to
share some thoughts about the oil and
natural gas industry and the role our industry has moving forward.
The past year has been a challenging
one for our industry. We have been straining to adjust to a host of potentially
harmful issues that raised pointed questions
about our industry's future. Federal tax
proposals threatened independent producers by attacking virtually every tax
provision that encouraged investing in
American oil and natural gas development,
and environmental and regulatory proposals from the Obama administration
threatened to establish barriers to responsible oil and natural gas development.
Today, U.S. and global energy policies
remain at the forefront of public debate,
and I expect they will remain there for
many years. Unfortunately, too often lost
in the rhetoric is the reality of what it
will take to provide the nation with affordable, reliable energy, and to assist in
returning our economy to full strength at
a time of high unemployment.
We need to look no further than the
oil and natural gas industry to understand
this challenge. During the give and take
of public discourse, few truly stop to
think how absolutely essential oil and
natural gas are to our lives, to our prosperity and security, and to our future.
Oil and natural gas are the foundation
of our energy-dependent economy. They
profoundly affect how we live and work.
They are keys to our mobility, to keeping
our homes and businesses warm, to providing us with electric power, and to supplying the raw materials for countless
consumer and industrial products.
Nationally, America's oil and natural
gas industry supports $1.2 trillion in U.S.
gross domestic product and provides $85
million a day to the federal government

through royalty payments and taxes. The
industry supports 9.8 million jobs, 5.6
percent of total U.S. employment. But,
we could do much more with the right
energy policies.
As the public continues focusing on
how to move to a vibrant energy future,
we must recognize that oil and natural
gas will continue to serve as the principal
component of our economy for many
years to come. The U.S. Energy Information Administration projects that oil and
natural gas will supply nearly 60 percent
of our energy needs in 2040. We need to
be investing now to meet this demand.
The International Energy Agency has
warned that failure to develop the oil and
natural gas resources now to meet future
needs could lead to a supply crisis.
The oil and natural gas industry is
one of the nation's premier job-creating
engines today and has the potential to
expand that role tomorrow, provided our
public policymakers understand the future
as well as present breadth and significance
of oil and natural gas to our domestic
economy. We seek no handouts and need
no stimulus-just opportunity.
Opportunity, that is, supported by sensible energy policies. Some of the policies
advanced over the past several years seemed
aimed at chilling the job creation potential
of domestic oil and natural gas development.
Proposals to eliminate important oil and
gas tax provisions, impose unnecessary
and duplicative federal regulation of oil
and natural gas activities, and expand climate change policies would serve only to
depress investment in new domestic oil
and natural gas projects, weaken the nation's
energy security, and make it more difficult
to achieve economic recovery.
Americans were skeptical of such proposals in 2014. They had concerns about
lost jobs and higher energy costs, about

new taxes, about shifting energy production
out of the country, and about ultimately
pushing costs on to consumers. That is
what the polls showed. It is also what the
American people said on Nov. 4, when
they spoke with their votes. The November
elections caused a massive shift in politics.
In short, Americans collectively said the
proposed energy policy solutions offered
by Washington were unacceptable.
Americans support developing our
plentiful domestic energy resources and
believe that can be done in a way protective
of our environment. They value a future
where we take advantage of all forms of
energy, and they value a future where we
encourage domestic development to generate the jobs that will put them to work
as well as supply the energy to help
secure our economy, allowing it to thrive
in the years and decades ahead.
The opponents of U.S. energy development have shown a propensity to align
themselves rhetorically with public sentiment, even as they consistently espouse
policies that would put that goal further
and further out of reach. History has
shown that increasing taxes on oil and
natural gas development negatively affects
consumers, businesses, and the economy.
Imposing new, duplicative federal regulations when the industry already is
well-regulated by the states will not put
America on a path of preparing for its
real energy future. Imposing burdensome
and restrictive emission and greenhouse
gas regulations will not ensure Americans
have ample supplies of the oil and natural
gas that every projection shows they will
demand in the near future.
We need to get to work doing the
right things for a better energy future.
Members of the Liaison Committee of
Cooperating Oil & Gas Associations continue to work together to leverage the
collective resources of our 29 state oil
and gas association members. Going forward in 2015, we will work together to
promote sensible energy policy that promotes American energy development and
not penalize America's small independent
oil and natural gas producers.
The political and economic realities
we face make it even more vital that our
voice is heard in even more venues and
that our industry speaks with a unified
voice. If we do so, and we do not waver
from our conviction that oil and natural
gas will remain vital to the economic
JANUARY 2015 195

American Oil and Gas Reporter - January 2015

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