A report issued by American Clean Skies Foundation Thursday projects that technology-driven changes in oil and gas production since 2007 will lead to annual employment gains of 835,000 to 1.6 million new jobs nationwide by 2017 (more than the entire U.S. auto manufacturing industry), and increase the country’s gross domestic product by $167 billion to $245 billion on a net basis.

Domestic natural gas production in 2017 is expected to be more than 6 Tcf annually, due in part to the use of new extraction technologies, the report said. Oil and liquids production is also seen as rising over that period, totaling an additional 630 million bbl in 2017, a volume that is nearly equal to the crude oil that the U.S. imported from the Persian Gulf in 2011 (680 million bbl).

According to the ACSF report, for every 1 Bcf/d of additional gas demand, there will be 13,000 additional direct drilling and pipeline jobs created, plus thousands more related to chemical plants and gas-consuming facilities. In turn, these jobs will generate a further 10,000 to 30,000 induced indirect jobs in the manufacturing, retail and service sectors.

This report — “Tech Effect: How Innovation in Oil and Gas Exploration is Spurring the U.S. Economy” — “helps us put a face on the large economic stimulus that shale gas production has provided for America,” said Gregory C. Staple, CEO of ACSF, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit group formed in 2007 by Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon to promote the use of natural gas for power generation (see Daily GPI, April 30, 2007).

States with extensive shale gas reserves, such as Texas and Pennsylvania, can expect to add up to 236,000 and 145,000 jobs in 2017, respectively, the study said. “States that do not have significant shale gas resources are also expected to gain tens of thousands of jobs, due largely to supply chain businesses. Examples include Florida (59,000 jobs), New Jersey (36,000 jobs) and Missouri (21,000 jobs).

The surge in gas production has led to a renaissance in petrochemical, steel, polymer, glass and ammonia facilities, the ACSF study said. These include:

According to the ACSF report, steel demand from the oil and gas industry is expected to be more than 66 million tons between 2008 and 2017, which would be more than enough to justify the new facilities that are being planned in Ohio. Overall steel production currently is 89 million tons a year. “Demand for steel tubular goods has soared, contributing to a revitalization of the domestic steel industry…[and] low energy prices are also helping to make the sector more competitive internationally,” it said.

Incremental tax receipts from all sources of government taxes are expected to rise to $85 billion a year by 2017, according to the report. In addition, it said that increases in royalty payments to individuals/governments should reach $12 billion annually in 2017.