» Civil rights leaders urge energy firms to diversify.
WASHINGTON — African American civil rights leaders are urging the oil and gas industry to diversify its workforce amid national protests over the death of Houston-born George Floyd during an arrest by Minneapolis police.
Rev. Jesse Jackson and Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League, have written letters to the trade group Interstate Natural Gas Association of America asking for a meeting to discuss the hiring of more women and minorities.
“We believe that through the development of a workforce that reflects the country’s demographics, upward mobility will take place in underserved, urban, rural, middle class and other communities,” Morial wrote in a letter last month to Alex Oehler, the interim president of INGAA.
Last year, black people represented just 7 percent of the oil and gas industry’s workforce, compared with 12 percent across all U.S. industries, according to the Department of Labor. Wom
en made up 22 percent of the industry, while representing 47 percent of the overall U.S. workforce. Latinos and Asians were also underrepresented, data shows.
The letters were first reported by news site Axios on Monday. Oehler told the Washington news outlet that “he plans to respond soon to Morial and welcomes the conversation about diversity.”
In recent years, oil and gas companies have tried to recruit more minorities, work with institutions such as historically black colleges, said a spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s largest trade group.
“We are committed to achieving greater diversity within the industry,” the spokesman said. “As an industry that supports millions of American jobs, we’re determined to build a diverse workforce of the future and prepare the next generation of leaders with the skills needed to succeed.”
The industry has had some success, doubling the percentage of African American employees from 3.5 percent in 2015. But with so few black leaders in the upper ranks of oil and gas companies, there is a long way to go, said Paula Glover, president of the American Association of Blacks in Energy.
“This is not just about hiring more people,” she said. “It’s about doing business with African American-owned companies and making sure African Americans in your organization have a path to leadership.”
In his letter, Morial also asks the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America to help in securing “equal access” to natural gas and other forms of energy for minority communities in the United States.
Jackson has worked to get a 30mile gas pipeline built for a small rural town in southern Illinois, where residents reportedly still rely on wood-burning stoves for heat in the wintertime.
“There are pockets of poverty all over the country,” Jackson told NBC 5 Chicago. “My job is to lift up those whose backs are against the wall.”