The Future of Oil, Coal, and Gas Under Obama

Oil, gas, coal, and electricity companies spent more than $115 million on the presidential campaign, more than any race since at least 1990, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Eighty percent of the candidate donations went to Republicans. Yet President Obama’s reelection may wind up benefiting some parts of the industry. Obama “is now going for a full-throated endorsement of oil and natural gas production in the United States, which is 180 degrees opposite from where he started,” says Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute (API), a trade association that represents the breadth of the industry. “The real question will be: Will the president’s actions match his words?”

While the industry has adopted a defensive stance, oil and gas didn’t fare too badly during Obama’s first term. Output of crude and other liquid petroleum products in the U.S. is on track to surge by more than 80 percent through 2020, the kind of consistent growth that hasn’t been seen since the 1960s, says Edward Morse, global head of commodities research for Citigroup. The administration has made more acreage on federal land available to energy companies than any president since Ronald Reagan, he says. “Facts are stubborn things, and they often defy people’s ideology,” says John Hanger, a special counsel at Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott and the former head of Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection.