Karen Matusic | 202-682-8118 | matusick@api.org
WASHINGTON, June 10, 2009 - Women working for America’s oil and natural gas companies in 11 states are on Capitol Hill this week to meet with policymakers and discuss their concerns on major issues affecting their industry. Geologists, petrophysicists, land professionals, refinery workers and others from Louisiana, Illinois, Texas, Arkansas, Alaska and beyond - all active, contributing members of their communities and their states, are using the opportunity to talk about how legislation under consideration would affect them, their communities and all American consumers.
API President and CEO Jack Gerard said the fly-in was the start of what he hopes will be a long-standing tradition for the oil and natural gas industry. “This is an educational and an outreach effort, as we put a real face on this industry. We want our policymakers to meet the hard-working employees of our industry and come away with a better understanding of who we are and what we do to bring Americans the energy they need, now and in the future.”
“I am a third-generation refinery employee and I have seen how an industry like ours can create opportunities for people in our area,” said Melissa Erker, who works at ConocoPhillips’ Wood River refinery in Illinois. “I want to tell policymakers that if they do not make the right decisions now, they could put an industry out of business. It would have a devastating effect on our community where 50 percent of the budget for the local school district comes from the oil industry.”
Louisiana native Aisha Ragas, a senior geologist with Anadarko Petroleum, said she wants to let lawmakers know that the oil and natural gas industry takes its responsibilities to the environment seriously. “I’m a geologist. Most of us get in this field for one reason - because we love the earth,” Ragas said. “Many of the negative connotations about our industry and the environment are difficult to hear because they couldn’t be further from the truth.”
Houston-based Ragas also said she believed it was important to let members of Congress see the oil and natural gas industry for what it is. “The oil and gas industry is many faces. It’s not just middle-aged men. It’s women too. We are from all different ethnic backgrounds, different socio-economic backgrounds. We have different career paths - some are scientists, others are managers, some are field or rig workers. But all of our jobs are valuable, and we all care about what everyone else cares about: doing our jobs well, taking care of our families and giving back to the community.”
Ragas’ colleague Thuy Rocque, a petroleum engineer at Anadarko who was 11 years old when her family fled Vietnam in a small wooden fishing boat in 1975, said she was proud to be part of a diverse workforce that prides itself on technological ingenuity. “People would be surprised at the advanced technology we use to safely produce oil and natural gas,” Rocque said.
Geri Storer, a Shell Exploration & Production employee who came to Washington this week from Anchorage, Alaska where she and her husband raise three young children, knows first-hand the impact the industry can have on local communities. A native Alaskan, Storer was a young girl when the Trans Alaska Pipeline was constructed and oil began flowing from the Prudhoe Bay fields. The impact on her Inupiat community was immediate.
“It meant well-paying jobs, better education and the revenues needed to provide better housing, water and sewage for people. Those who are setting policy that affects people who live far from Washington D.C. need to consider how they are impacting the lives of others. It is too easy to go after an industry when it does not see the face of the employees,” Storer said, noting that the oil and natural gas industry supports six million American jobs.
Cheryl Gomez, a technical engineering manager for ExxonMobil, said she wants to tell lawmakers how important it is to open new areas for oil and natural gas development. Gomez, who has worked in Qatar and is about to begin a multi-year assignment working on a project on the Sakhalin Island in eastern Russia, said it is important for lawmakers to understand the international nature of the industry.
“Maybe it’s my unique perspective, having worked around the world, but I really want to stress to those in Congress that U.S. companies need to compete with other countries from around the globe. Many areas we are given access to develop oil and gas in the United States are mature and declining fields. We need to be given access to new areas or we simply aren’t going to be able to compete,” Gomez said.
Lynne Hackedorn, vice president of land for Cobalt International Energy, an independent producer that pursues niche opportunities in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, said her goal during the Capitol Hill meetings was to help members of Congress understand the complex nature of the oil and gas industry.
“I want members of Congress to understand that oil and gas companies risk tremendous amounts of capital to drill wells in the Gulf of Mexico, with only about a 30 percent chance of finding oil or gas. Then we have to drill appraisal wells—at additional costs—to determine if the discovery is economic to develop. In the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, where my company works, a discovery is economic to develop if it can support a $1 billion-plus platform.”
Houston-based Hackedorn said she was concerned about proposals to raise taxes on the industry. She said a proposal to eliminate the expensing of Intangible Drilling Costs (IDCs), could have a catastrophic impact on smaller producers, like Cobalt, that work in high-risk areas. “I doubt this company could have been formed without IDC. We have 55 employees and we depend on this,” she said.
Updated: June 10, 2009