Response of Employment to Changes in Oil and Gas--论文代写范文精选

当石油价格下跌,消费者可能有更多的钱花在其他商品和服务。然而,石油和天然气行业可能不景气,因此油价下跌也会直接减少就业。例如,当能源价格暴跌在2008-2009年,能源生产州的就业下降.下面的essay代写范文继续详述。

Abstract
During early summer of 2014, oil prices exceeded $100 per barrel, and many industry analysts expected prices to remain at that level for some time. However, oil prices began to decline in July, and were down more than 50 percent by the beginning of 2015. Although the response was delayed by a few months, exploration and drilling for oil and gas dropped significantly, with rig counts down 49 percent by the end of April 2015. Exploration and drilling may decline further depending on when oil prices settle and for how long. 

In energy-producing states, exploration and drilling in the oil and gas sector—and economic activity more broadly—are vulnerable to energy price declines, with smaller and less-diversified states expected to be the most exposed. The net effects of price declines are not obvious. When oil prices fall, consumers likely have more money to spend on other goods and services. However, oil- and gas-producing states have a larger share of employment in the oil and gas sector, and falling oil prices can thus directly decrease employment. For example, when energy prices collapsed in 2008-09, employment in energy-producing states fell, partially reversing the strong performance of those states through the early stages of the Great Recession. 

In subsequent years of the recovery, growth in the global oil supply—mostly from U.S. production—coupled withdeclining global demand for oil, led to the price of oil falling by over 50 percent in the second half of 2014, with potential negative effects on oil- and gas-producing states. Despite the growth of the oil and gas sector over the past decade, energy-producing states appear to now rely less on the sector than in the early and mid-1980s, but more than in the late 1990s. Given the technological changes the sector has experienced, it is unclear how the recent decline in crude oil prices will affect energy-producing states. Prior research has shown that employment in oil- and gas-producing states is more responsive to changes in exploration and drilling, measured by rig counts, than to oil prices directly. 

As a result, changes in oil prices could affect total employment in producing states through changes in rig counts. This article estimates the response of total employment in oil- and gas-producing states to changes in rig activity caused by changes in oil prices. Results indicate that removing an active rig eliminates 28 jobs in the first month, 82 jobs after six months, and 171 jobs in the long run. Given the decline in rigs from September 2014 to April 2015, total employment is expected to fall as much as 4 percent in some energyproducing states but as little as 0.1 percent in others. Section I highlights past boom and bust cycles in the oil and gas sector. Section II discusses the various phases of oil and gas development and the changing nature of the employment footprint associated with each phase. Section III introduces a model to estimate how total employment responds to changes in rig counts.

Boom and Bust Cycles of Oil Prices, Exploration, and Drilling 
Over the last five years, the oil and gas sector underwent a boom, with rigs more than doubling, and then a bust, with rigs falling over 50 percent in the last six months. Such boom and bust cycles are not uncommon in energy-producing states. Steep oil price declines have occurred several times in the last 30 years. Each of these declines induced a large decline in exploration and drilling as measured by rig counts. Yet each cycle had unique circumstances due to changes in supply anddemand factors. Over the same time period, the share of economic output and labor compensation from oil and gas declined in most energy-producing states, potentially making them less vulnerable to the current drop in rig counts. A rapid decline in crude oil prices and subsequent decline in rigs is not a rare event.

Crude oil prices dropped sharply six times from 1981 to 2009 (Chart 1). Wilkerson summarized these episodes to contextualize the most recent decline and found differences in the speed of the price decline, the path of prices prior to the decline, the duration of low oil prices, and the state of the U.S. economy at the time of the decline (Table 1). The 1985-86 period appears to be most similar to the present situation. Real oil prices fell by more than 50 percent, rigs declined by 60 percent, and the United States was not in a recession—all similar to the second half of 2014 and beginning of 2015. The role of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was also similar to today. From 1981 to 1985, Saudi Arabia, the largest OPEC member, reduced its production by 75 percent in the wake of falling oil prices (Hamilton). 

When the price of oil continued to decline in 1986, Saudi Arabia abandoned this strategy and began increasing production. With the increase in supply, the price of oil declined further to $20 per barrel, spurring a further decline in rigs. Similarly, in November 2014, OPEC announced it would not cut production despite the price of oil declining in each of the prior four months. In the past, OPEC would often cut production to boost prices. However, in the face of growing supply from U.S. producers, OPEC was unwilling to cut production, perhaps to protect their market share of global oil sales. Their unwillingness to cut production was an additional shock to oil prices, and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures prices declined nearly 20 percent in both December 2014 and January 2015. Futures prices averaged about $49 per barrel through March 2015, with a significant reduction in rig activity. Throughout these boom and bust cycles, the effect on oil- and gasproducing states has differed from the effect on the national economy. Oil- and gas-producing states are typically the first to experience the effects of boom and bust cycles in energy activity and may, as a result, face different outcomes compared with the nation as a whole.

Hamilton and Owyang found U.S. oil-producing states experienced their own regional recession in the mid-1980s when oil prices declined even while the U.S. economy grew strongly. Despite the growing importance of the oil and gas sector in recent years, most oil and gas states rely less on the sector now than in prior decades. For example, in 1982, the average share of economic output from oil and gas extraction in energy-producing states was 17 percent. The share was as high as 35 percent in Wyoming and Louisiana compared with just 4 percent for the United States as a whole (Chart 2, Panel A). 

The relative size of the sector decreased in the late 1990s, as oil and gas shrank in energy-producing states on average to around 3 percent of total output. By 2012, the average share had increased to 9.5 percent but was still only 2 percent of total U.S. output. A similar trend occurred in the share of total labor compensation from the oil and gas sector: the share declined from 1982 to 1997 and was higher by 2012, though still below its 1980s level (Chart 2, Panel B). One exception to this trend is North Dakota, which saw labor compensation from the sector increase from 1982 to 2012. 

Since the relative importance of oil and gas differs among the states, it is not surprising that the effect of changes in oil prices or rigs would also differ. For example, recent work by Murphy, Plante, and Yücel shows that the cost and benefits of the recent oil price decline are unevenly distributed across the 50 states. They estimate a 50 percent decline in crude oil prices could reduce total employment from 0 to 1 percent in Alaska, Louisiana, New Mexico, Texas, and West Virginia. The authors expect larger declines of more than 2 percent in Oklahoma, North Dakota, and Wyoming, but expect employment in the remaining states to increase modestly.1

Employment in Phases of Oil and Gas Extraction Oil and natural gas extraction involves four main phases: exploration, appraisal, development, and production. The number and type of workers involved in each phase varies. Development in a region often takes place over several years. Workers as well as goods and services may be sourced throughout a state to directly and indirectly supportdevelopment, all of which potentially influence total employment as a result of oil and gas activity. In the first phase (exploration), teams of geologists, geophysicists, and engineers identify, characterize, and examine geologic prospects that hold the most promise of yielding commercial quantities of oil and natural gas. 

Before drilling can occur, procurement specialists negotiate oil and gas leases with public or private mineral owners (Fitzgerald). These leases give energy companies the legal right to access public and private land and negotiate what mineral owners will be paid if oil and gas is found. Workers then drill exploratory wells to determine whether a reservoir has sufficient oil and gas to make development profitable (Dahl and Duggan). In the second phase (appraisal), workers drill additional wells in smaller areas of the reservoir to confirm earlier estimates of the amount of oil and gas that can be extracted profitably. The purpose of this phase is to reduce uncertainty about the size of the oil or gas field and its properties (Stoneburner). 

Petroleum geologists, geophysicists, and reservoir engineers evaluate samples and information collected from the reservoir to determine how much oil or gas might be in the reservoir and how fast oil or gas will move through it. The appraisal phase helps a company decide whether the oil or gas field can be developed. Employment associated with the exploration and appraisal phases mostly occurs within the oil and gas sector and in professional and business services, such as legal services to negotiate the terms of leasing contracts or engineering services to conduct environmental assessment studies. The third phase (development) takes place after successful appraisal and before full-scale production. 

The development stage is the most labor intensive. Workers must prepare the drilling site, drill and case the well, perform hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”), and construct the needed pipeline infrastructure (Jacquet). Additional workers are also often needed to build access roads to reach new development areas. Jobs in the development phase include drilling rig operators, excavation crews, truck drivers, heavy equipment operators, fracking equipment operators, and semiskilled general laborers. These workers come not only from the oil and gas sector but also from the manufacturingconstruction, and transportation sectors. 

Once workers finish drilling wells in one area, crews and rigs typically move on to other areas in the same region to drill more wells. During this phase, areas of development experience the largest influx of oil and gas workers and the highest demand for goods and services from the sector. In the fourth phase (production), rig operators extract hydrocarbons from oil or gas fields and see the first revenue from selling the oil or gas. Production can last from a few years to several decades depending on the size of the oil or gas field and the cost of running the wells and production facilities. 

Compared with the development stage, fewer workers are needed during production, and most jobs are within the oil and gas sector (Jacquet). As most development phases involve jobs in multiple sectors, net employment effects are best measured as the change in total employment in each state. Oil and gas extraction directly increases employment and the income of those working in the industry, particularly during exploration and drilling but also during production. Expenditures on constructing and operating oil and gas wells may also indirectly increase demand for other goods and services such as gravel, water, concrete, vehicles, fuel, hardware, consumables, food services, and housing. As a result, other industries producing or selling these goods and services in an area with large-scale development may also increase employment to meet demand.

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