The number of jobs gained from oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would be far fewer than the 750,000 that many unions have said the drilling would create, says a study released Sunday by environmental groups.
The League of Conservation Voters and other environmental groups that oppose the Alaska drilling say the study, done by an economist with ties to unions, should go far to offset the main argument–new jobs–the Teamsters and other unions used to persuade 36 House Democrats to vote for drilling last month. The environmentalists want the Senate to vote against drilling this fall.
“Some labor unions outmaneuvered us in the House,” said Deb Callahan, president of the League of Conservation Voters. “But we still think we can win this thing in the Senate.”
The new study, by Dean Baker, co-director of the Center of Economic and Policy Research, faulted a 1990 study the Teamsters and the oil industry cited to argue that the Alaska drilling would create 750,000 jobs.
Baker’s study estimated the drilling would create 46,300 jobs. He concluded that the earlier study, commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute, was far off in estimating that the oil from the refuge would represent 3.5 percent of world oil production. Baker predicted that the refuge would account for 1.15 percent of world production.
As a result, he said, the drilling would push down world oil prices far less than forecast by the 1990 study, conducted by the WEFA Group, based in Bala Cynwyd, Pa. The 1990 study said the lowered prices would give the American economy a shot in the arm, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs.
While the 11-year-old study predicted that other oil-producing nations would do little to reduce output to push prices up, Baker said other nations, including those of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, would cut production far more than the 1990 study estimated to offset output from the refuge. That, he said, would nullify much or all of the lower prices generated by Arctic drilling.
Citing his prediction of 46,300 new jobs, Baker wrote, “Economic impacts of this magnitude are almost too small to be noticed, given the size of the U.S. economy.”
Jerry Hood, an energy policy assistant to Teamster President James P. Hoffa, defended the 1990 study, saying, “We are comfortable with the jobs number developed in that study.”
