is in short-term construction work on facilities such as rigs, re- 

 fineries, and related petrochemical processing plants. 



Estimates of potential total employment from OCS petroleum and 

 gas exploration vary substantially. Table 6 illustrates the range in 

 the peak employment projections among the five completed regional 

 studies. The size of the assumed daily production level varies as, 

 consequently, does the number of jobs. However, estimates of the 

 number of workers required per 1 ,000 barrels of daily production also 

 differ from study to study. 



The figures in the "high find" portion of the table are a com- 

 bination of the peak levels of employment for individual facilities. 

 For example, the 83,100 jobs in the CEQ study assumes that all facili- 

 ties are built simultaneously, when in fact the crew employed for two 

 years in building a rig fabrication yard might subsequently find work 

 constructing an oil refinery. Yet when CEQ's unreal istically high 

 figure is used to estimate how much overall employment would rise be- 

 cause of OCS activities, the result is only three percent higher than 



1 o 



a no-development base level. Since this three percent increase in 

 employment is based on a petroleum production level six times greater 

 than the most optimistic recent U.S.G.S. estimate, the regional effect 

 of direct OCS employment is likely to be small. 



A vital issue is the proportion of OCS employment that would be 

 held by New Englanders. Estimates vary greatly, ranging from 30 per- 

 cent to 75 percent. It is interesting to note that about 47 percent 



I Q 



of the workers on the COST well G-l project were from New England! 

 The local availability of specialized skills and services will de- 

 termine the number of New Englanders hired. For this reason, it may 



29 



