Offshore Energy
South Carolina is projected to see the second highest levels of spending, employment and gross domestic product growth if our Atlantic offshore oil and natural gas resources are developed.
This is in addition to the obvious energy benefit of developing the almost 5 billion barrels of oil and 37 trillion cubic feet of natural gas along the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf (OCS).
Employment Opportunity
The oil and natural gas industry today supports more than 67,000 jobs in South Carolina.
35,000 new jobs could be created by 2035 with the development of the Atlantic's OCS energy resources. This includes 11,000 industry direct jobs and 24,000 indirect jobs in areas such as retail jobs, real estate jobs and food beverage jobs.
Economic Opportunity
In 2011, the oil and natural gas industry added $4.7 billion to South Carolina’s gross state product. Development of the resources in the Atlantic OCS could add an additional $2.7 billion to the state's economy.
Additionally, if the same revenue sharing arrangement in enacted for South Carolina as the Gulf of Mexico state/federal revenue sharing arrangement, South Carolina could see a 37.5% share of the bonuses, rents and royalties generated which are projected to reach $850 million per year by 2035.
The cumulative effect on the state budget from 2017-2035 is projected to be over $3.7 billion.
Safety
Extensive resources have been devoted to safety, drawing on the best minds from the industry and government to build a multi-layer system, with many built-in redundancies to help prevent incidents, to intervene and stop a release that might occur, and to manage and clean up spills.
The U.S. oil and natural gas industry constantly reviews their offshore safety measures and operations to identify areas for improvements in spill prevention, intervention and response capabilities. Since the Macoondo incident in 2010, many standards have been either revised or newly created, including standards on well design, blowout prevention equipment, subsea equipment, and worker safety.
Making safe offshore operations even safer is the reason industry created the Center for Offshore Safety several years ago. The center works with individual companies to systematize safe operations through effective safety and environmental management systems that the federal government requires of OCS operators.
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