Despite the hurdles this administration has put in front of the oil and gas industry, it leaps ahead in creating much-needed jobs. In 2011, it created nine percent of all new jobs.

Yet the administration’s plan on offshore exploration is to limit new leasing to 12 potential sales in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s coast. Nothing along the Pacific or Mid-Atlantic coasts.

The House will vote on H.R. 6082, a bill that will open more areas to oil and gas exploration. The U.S. Chamber sent House members a Key Vote Alert urging them to vote for the bill.

The letter mentions the job-creating potential from opening up more areas to offshore exploration:

Energy research firm Wood Mackenzie calculates that full development of the offshore areas left off-limits by DOI’s current plan—the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and most of the Eastern Gulf of Mexico—could provide hundreds of thousands of additional new jobs, more than $300 billion in cumulative additional revenue for government, and nearly 4 million addition barrels oil equivalent per day by 2030.

This is about continuing to do what is working. The oil and gas sector has demonstrated itself as a job creator. H.R. 6082 would fuel (pun intended) it even more.