US execs united on oil drilling, divided on gas exports

The Business Roundtable, a policy forum for leading CEOs, urged President Barack Obama to expand offshore oil production, coal exports and drilling on public lands in the interest of a fresh energy policy.

New technology has already put vast natural gas reserves within reach — unlocking shale deposits and creating a sudden glut of the fuel — but executives stayed silent on whether that bounty should be exported.

Energy interests hope natural gas sales abroad will help their bottom line while some domestic industries fear exports will rob them of cheap fuel that could expand the nation's manufacturing base.

The Roundtable, which brings together executives from companies as varied as Coca-Cola Co. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., balked when asked for a concrete position on natural gas exports.

“We haven't been overly specific with what we want to do there,” David Cote, chairman and CEO of Honeywell International Inc told reporters in a call to discuss the plan.

Dow Chemical Co., a proponent for a go-slow policy on natural gas exports and a member of the Roundtable, has warned that shipping the fuel abroad would mean fewer domestic factory jobs.

Sudden natural gas exports “would allow U.S. firms to profit from exports in the short term but at the long-term expense of the rest of the economy,” Dow CEO Andrew Liveris wrote in a Monday editorial in the Wall Street Journal.

The United States stands to gain as many as 5 million new jobs by the end of the decade as foreign companies build domestic factories to tap cheap and abundant natural gas and electricity, the Boston Consulting Group concluded last year.

The energy sector has asked the Obama administration to bless plans to build natural gas export docks but officials have not signaled their intentions.

Whatever happens to exports, though, the Roundtable encouraged development of carbon fuels that are the backbone of the nation's energy sector and it urged federal officials to open more land to oil, gas and coal interests.

The organization also repeated its call to approve the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline from Canada to Texas.

“Technology, coupled with access to vast resources, could help strengthen America's position as an energy superpower,” Chevron Corp. CEO John Watson said in the call.

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