“Powering Past impossible —that’s what natural gas and oil help Americans do every day,” Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, said in his annual API State of American Energy report. “They are leading fuels for our modern economy, and they furnish the molecular building blocks for products that Americans use throughout their day — from smartphones to fabrics to lifesaving pharmaceuticals. They’re also essential to technologies and innovations that help solve some of society’s greatest challenges. They make us safer and healthier. They provide pathways to a brighter future. Today’s natural gas and oil industry is smart, high-tech and is essential to an advancing society.”
Throughout his address, Gerard painted an optimistic look at America’s natural gas and oil industries.
He stated that carbon dioxide emissions are at near 25-year low and energy-relations CO2 emissions have fallen in 43 states for the past decade. Gerard pointed out that methane emissions have declined as gas production has soared. Between 1990 and 2016, the industry invested more than $339 billion in environmental enhancements.
The natural gas and oil industries sports 10.3 million jobs today nationwide and has lowered energy costs to consumers due to the abundance of supplies.
“We share a common vision for our future: one that includes clean, reliable and abundant energy, economic prosperity and continued environmental progress,” Gerard said.
The part of the report that Sen. Wayne Wallingford found “most significant and inspiring” was a story related by Retired U.S. Army Captain Bergan Flannigan who lost a leg while on patrol in Afghanistan. Flannigan is fitted with a prosthetic leg that is a melding of biomedical engineering, artificial intelligence and petroleum-based materials.
This is just one of thousands of examples of the ways that the oil and gas industry has improved everyday lives in America, according the Wallingford.
“The natural gas, oil and refined products industry is focused on powering the future,” Gerard said in his report. “The fact is we always have been, even if most didn’t know it. Meeting global energy demands requires constant innovation, unconventional creativity and a commitment not to be satisfied with the status quo or to accept what others consider impossible today.”
Alisha Shurr was a reporter for The Missouri Times and The Missouri Times Magazine. She joined The Missouri Times in January 2018 after working as a copy editor for her hometown newspaper in Southern Oregon. Alisha is a graduate of Kansas State University.
