Oil & Gas: Background

Led by the oil and gas industry, this sector regularly pumps the vast majority of its campaign contributions into Republican coffers. Even as other traditionally GOP-inclined industries have shifted somewhat to the left, this sector has remained rock-solid red.

Since the 1990 election cycle, more than two-thirds of this sector's contributions to candidates and party committees has gone to Republicans. Besides oil and gas, the electric utilities industry is another big donor in this sector. Less generous, but even more partisan, is the mining industry.

Contributions from the oil industry spiked in 2012, increasing from $34 million in 2010 to $79 million in 2012; 87 percent of its donations to candidates and parties went to Republicans. Almost $20 million went to outside spending groups. Oxbow Corp and Chevron Corp were responsible for about $7 million of this outside money. Oxbow gave $4 million to the single-candidate super PAC supporting former Gov. Mitt Romney presidential bid, Restore Our Future, and $550,000 to the conservative super PAC America 360 Committee, which supported Scott Brown (R) in his contest against Elizabeth Warren (D) for a Massachusetts Senate seat. Chevron gave $2.5 million to a different conservative super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund.

Energy companies often favor lawmakers in fossil fuel-producing states. Republicans have led the efforts to defeat President Barack Obama's climate-change efforts. Still, the energy sector did contribute $2.5 million to Obama's 2012 campaign. It donated more than $10 million to presidential hopeful Mitt Romney's, however.

According to advocacy group Oil Change International, President Obama "proposed cutting [oil] subsidies every year he's been in office." The group estimates that these cuts would save about $4 billion annually, but none of cuts have made it through Congress.

Whereas the U.S. was once dependent on the Middle East and other nations for oil and feared ever-climbing prices, by 2015 it had become the largest oil producer in the world, largely due to the shale gas boom. From 2013 to 2016, the average price for a barrel of crude oil dropped from $98 to $52, which experts predicted would decrease oil production in the long run.