Energizing West Virginia
Reid Porter
Posted July 9, 2015
Our series highlighting the economic and jobs impact of energy in each of the 50 states continues today with West Virginia. We started our focus on the state level with Virginia on June 29 and continued this week with Missouri, Indiana and North Carolina. The energy impacts of the states individually combine to form energy’s national economic and jobs picture: 9.8 million jobs supported and $1.2 trillion in value added.
Information covered in this series can be found online here, arranged on an interactive map of the United States. State-specific information will be populated on this map as the series continues.
Click on the thumbnail to bring up a two-page snapshot of energy’s benefits to West Virginia.
The top-line numbers: 80,000 jobs supported statewide, according to PwC; $5.8 billion added to the state economy; $3.6 billion contributed to the state’s labor income. All are significant drivers for the state’s economy.
Page 2 of the document illustrates the impacts of how EPA’s proposed ozone regulations could cost West Virginia $21.2 billion in Gross State Product losses from 2017 to 2014 and 14,276 in lost jobs.
Energy is critically important to West Virginia, serving as a key engine for the state economy – expanding job opportunities and offering the hope of prosperity to individual West Virginians and their families.
The future benefits of energy for West Virginia – and the rest of the country – largely depend on national decisions on the country’s energy path. A new Wood Mackenzie study contrasts the benefits that a set of pro-development policies could have on energy supplies, jobs, the economy and American households with the likely negative effects on energy of regulatory constrained policies. The key comparisons are found on the first page of the linked document.
Energy is essential for all facets of our daily lives, from powering national, state and local economies to powering the family vehicle. Safe, responsible development of domestic oil and natural gas resources is linked to individual prosperity, energy security and basic liberties.
About The Author
Reid Porter is a spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute. Before joining API, he worked as Account Supervisor at Edelman. Porter double majored in English Literature and the Spanish language at Middlebury College in Vermont. He enjoys traveling, cheering for the Green Bay Packers, soccer, rereading Hemingway novels and spending time with family.