Jack Gerard

Jack Gerard is president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, the powerful oil-industry lobbying group in Washington, D.C., and he’s been called “Big Oil’s Big Man in Washington.”  Coincidentally, Gerard is an “area seventy” for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, sometimes erroneously called the Mormon Church.  “Seventies” in the Mormon Church manage areas of Church activity all over the world.

The son of a John Deere salesman and a schoolteacher, Gerard grew up in Mud Lake, Idaho (pop. 358).  After attending the University of Idaho for a year, he served a full-time mission for the Church in Australia. After his mission, he returned to the University of Idaho, but then transferred to George Washington University, earning a bachelors degree in political science and then and a Juris Doctorate.  While at George Washington, he worked on the staff of Representative George Hansen.   Gerard then spent about five years on the staff of Senator James A. McClure. [1]

Photo by Barbara L. Salisbury/The Washington Times

With former Senator McClure, Gerard co-founded the lobbying firm of McClure, Gerard & Neuenschwander. When that firm was sold, he became president and CEO of the National Mining Association, and then president and CEO of the American Chemistry Council.

Gerard is fully in favor of drilling and oil and natural gas production in the U.S., which he says, would create thousands, even millions, of jobs, boost the economy, and end dependence on foreign oil.

Gerard was featured in an article in the Washington Times, where he was quoted as saying the following:

“We’re still very troubled by not only the number of regulations, but the extreme nature of them. The president called on his people to review the regulatory processes. But we can point to a number of regulatory processes that have been initiated or continue to go forward that discourage the development of oil and natural gas in this country.”

For those who fear domestic drilling poses too many risks, Mr. Gerard counters that the industry is more careful than many people think.  Gerard explained that domestic drilling could create another 190,000 jobs by 2013. By 2025, it could generate another $194 billion in tax revenue. By 2030, American could produce 92 percent of its liquid fuels in the U.S. and Canada.

An article on CNN’s Money says,

Wooing the American public is just one prong of Gerard’s strategy for preserving his members’ tax breaks and expanding their access to energy reserves. A lobbyist is only as good as his relationships, and Gerard, a devout churchgoer with eight children, including twin boys adopted from Guatemala, is quite adept at using his personal life to forge bonds with important allies on the Hill. At the same time he’s gained unprecedented direct and regular access to the CEOs of his most important member companies, including Exxon’s (XOM, Fortune 500) Rex Tillerson and ConocoPhillips’ (COP, Fortune 500) James Mulva.

Gerard regularly flies to Houston for meetings with oil executives, and he has found a way to get particularly close to Exxon’s Tillerson, who heads API’s biggest member company and happens to serve as national president of the Boy Scouts of America. Gerard has been active in the leadership of the D.C.-area organization.  But even though “API is seen as the lobbying arm of some of the world’s largest companies (Exxon, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips are Nos. 2, 3, and 4, respectively, on the Fortune 500 ranking of companies by revenue), it also includes dozens of small suppliers, and Gerard has started to enlist those companies and other allies in his effort to show how vital the industry is to the economy” (CNN Money).

Gerard chalks up his time-management strategy to a three-word formula: “good, better, best.” It’s a philosophy, he says, that encourages him not to settle for a good use of his time but to strive for the best one. The credo comes from a 2007 speech by a Mormon church leader named Dallin Oaks. Embedded in Oaks’ message was an admonition that “to innovate does not necessarily mean to expand; very often it means to simplify” (CNN Money).

Gerard has simplified API, firing 20% of the staff and paring priorities from a sprawling list of two dozen items, including research into alternative energy, to just six, focused on expanding onshore and offshore drilling and blocking proposals such as the Senate Democrats’ effort to cut about $21 billion in tax breaks over 10 years.