Chevron CEO says supercommittee should boost oil drilling

The CEO of oil giant Chevron Corp. said Wednesday that the bipartisan deficit supercommittee should expand U.S. oil-and-gas leasing, joining a senior House Republican in urging the panel to wade into energy policy when it meets this fall.

“I know their emphasis is certainly on the budget, and there is an opportunity for our industry to contribute both jobs and to deficit reduction through the activity that our industry conducts, and so I hope that energy policy will be considered as a part of their program,” CEO John Watson told reporters in the Capitol.

{mosads}Watson, who noted “vast” U.S. areas off-limits to development, was among speakers at Resources at Work: An Energy Jobs Summit, a wide-ranging Capitol Hill energy forum hosted by The Hill and the American Petroleum Institute.

His suggestion comes as House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) is weighing his approach on pushing the 12-member committee, which begins meeting this week, to expand drilling access.

Hastings is pressing the panel to open up Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling rigs and allow wider offshore leasing as well.

Hastings, who also spoke at the event Wednesday, argues that federal royalties, leasing bids and tax revenues from wider development should be pursued in addition to spending cuts.

“We … have to look at new ways to generate revenue without raising taxes,” Hastings said. “Increasing American energy production is one of the easiest ways to generate federal revenue.”

“Energy production must be part of the conversation as the joint committee begins its work,” he said.

The GOP-led House this year passed several bills crafted by Hastings that would mandate faster Gulf of Mexico permitting and require the Interior Department to vastly expand offshore areas for drilling in coming years.

Hastings’s plans to include recommendations for developing the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and other areas when the Natural Resources panel he leads makes formal recommendations to the supercommittee next month.

Hastings predicts the three House Republicans on the panel will entertain his idea. “I can’t believe any of them would not be open to what I am suggesting,” Hastings told reporters on the sidelines of the half-day energy summit Wednesday.

But opening ANWR, a longstanding GOP and industry goal, faces extremely long odds in the current Congress, while mandating offshore leasing expansions also faces big Senate hurdles.

Hastings said his effort to convince the supercommittee is a “work in progress” and that he’ll be “doing everything I can” to advance the effort.

Most Democrats oppose opening the wildlife refuge, including Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), a member of the supercommittee who often has made protecting the area a priority.

But Hastings expressed hope that opposition to ANWR drilling will fade. 

“Maybe with the price of oil where it is, with the price of gas where it is, the national security aspect, maybe some of these members will have an epiphany,” he said.