As American manufacturers champion their contributions to economic competitiveness and product innovation today, the industry has yet another reason to celebrate – U.S. manufacturing employment is still on the rise.
One of the most significant challenges facing the fuel and petrochemical industries is finding the next generation of craft professionals ranging from electricians to millwrights to everything in between.
U.S. refineries are the most complex in the world, allowing them to extract more value out of each barrel of oil than any other refining system globally. This competitive edge is made possible by access to global markets.
The United States is the now largest producer of crude oil and has the largest, most complex and most efficient refining industry in the world. Yet two of our most important oil trading partners are those that share our borders: Canada and Mexico.
It was 2010 and Jerry Wascom, ExxonMobil’s Americas refining director, was worried. Despite fuel and petrochemical manufacturers making significant improvements in the safety of their individual operations, across the industries there was an uptick in serious incidents. Workers were getting injured, surrounding communities were losing confidence, the reputation of the industries was being tarnished and regulators were becoming increasingly engaged. Wascom turned to his counterparts within the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers Association (AFPM), the industry trade group, and asked, “Are we doing enough to protect people?”
Right now, members of Congress are debating a series of taxes as part of the multi-trillion-dollar reconciliation package that could make the crude oil that runs through U.S. refineries more expensive.
COVID-19 upended energy markets. Demand disappeared and producers scaled back. Now that economies are reopening, and the demand for goods and services is rebounding, the demand for energy all along the supply chain is increasing, driving up not only the cost of the feedstocks and fuels refineries and petrochemical manufacturers use, but also the cost of the energy used at every step of the supply chain.
