Input-Output Analysis

What are the benefits and burdens to the American people from oil and gas development in federal waters? What jobs, earnings, and output are created when a well is drilled or a change of crew steps onto a workboat to travel to an offshore platform? ERG conducts input-output analysis to help answer such questions.

For example, for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, ERG prepares analyses to support federal oil and gas leasing in the Gulf of Mexico. We use MAG-PLAN, a two-stage input-output model, to estimate employment, personal income, and other economic impacts from activities in the Outer Continental Shelf. For Stage 1 of MAG-PLAN, ERG develops industry expenditure patterns for offshore activities ranging from the collection of geotechnical and geophysical data, to installing production systems, to the decommissioning of those systems. For Stage 2, we use region-specific multipliers to calculate the jobs, earnings, and output resulting from oil and gas operations in the OCS.