Why "drain America first" is not a jobs policy

Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations did a useful analysis last fall of the jobs the US could expect from drastically reducing oversight and expanding oil and gas drilling, both on and offshore.  There are a few important insights from this work, the main one being that advocates for this approach vastly overestimate the number of jobs that would come from such a policy.  This overestimate mainly results from false assumptions, a big one being the belief that the Obama Administration has somehow strangled oil and gas development in the US.  Climate Progress, referring to a Wall Street Journal article (subscription required) summarized as follows:

America’s Oil Production Grew Faster Than Any Other Country in Last Three Years

Federal forecasters are expected to confirm on Monday what the energy industry already knows: Oil production is surging in the U.S.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration is likely to raise by a substantial amount its existing estimate that U.S. oil production will grow by 550,000 barrels per day by 2020, to just over six million barrels daily.

The forecast will include new production data from developing oil fields, including the Bakken shale area in North Dakota, which could hold as much of 4.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil. North Dakota’s output of oil and related liquids topped 500,000 barrels per day in November, meaning that the state pumped more oil than Ecuador. In fact, U.S. oil production grew faster than in any other country over the last three years and will continue to surge as drillers move away from natural gas due to a growing gas glut, experts say. The glut has sent natural-gas prices to a 10-year low.

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