Statement: HECHO is Committed to Elevating Hispanic Voices in Oil and Gas Policy Conversations
Gas prices continue to increase across the United States. HECHO is aware of the disproportionate impact that high gas prices have on the Hispanic community, and we are determined to elevate our community’s voice in the policy conversations around oil and gas. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Latinos account for 85% of all farmworkers, 59% of the country's construction crews, 53% of all employees in food services and 39% of the nation's total workforce, these jobs require commutes and fuel consumption. This situation highlights the long-term need for us to invest in and grow clean alternatives to fossil fuels as a means of combatting the climate crisis, and also providing a permanent solution to the irregularities of gas prices impacting our community’s pockets.
HECHO is committed to advocating for these shifts towards cleaner alternatives such as affordable electric vehicle production, and in the short-term we are committed to holding oil and gas executives accountable for their false narrative that investment in green energy is the cause of increased gas prices. The oil and gas industry sits on over 9,000 unused oil drilling permits on federal land.
In 2020, big oil and gas companies got an $8.2 billion bailout to help them account for pandemic shortfalls in oil consumption, companies laid off 60,000 workers so they could use that money to boost their share prices and reward their CEOs with massive bonuses instead of offsetting costs to retain their workforce. In 2021 the top 25 largest oil and gas companies made a record-setting $237 billion.
It is time to hold the industry that has been making billions of dollars off of our federal public lands accountable. While they drive public narratives to distract from their own price-gouging, taxpayers are forced to pay billions for the industry’s millions of abandoned wells which were never properly sealed and cleaned.
HECHO urges Congress to continue investment in green energy alternatives while also taking further action to ensure that the oil and gas industry pays fair royalty rates for their waste of our finite resources, and that industry cleans up after itself so that pollutants from abandoned wells don’t continue to poison our communities until they are cleaned on the taxpayer’s dime.