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Oil, Gas Producers Gather In Wichita For Annual Convention

JC Watts speaks to the KIOGA convention on Monday in Wichita.
Nadya Faulx
/
KMUW
JC Watts speaks to the KIOGA convention on Monday in Wichita.

Hundreds of independent oil and gas explorers and producers are in Wichita this week for their annual convention.

This year marks the 80th annual meeting of the Kansas Independent Oil and Gas Association. The group, which formed in 1937, says independent producers are responsible for 93 percent of oil and 63 percent of natural gas produced in Kansas.

JC Watts, a Republican former congressman from Oklahoma who also sat on the state’s regulatory commission, spoke at the convention. He said the oil and gas industry, and the people responsible for regulating it, have challenges ahead.

“Technology over the next 10 or 15 years, I suspect is going to have some consequences, some impact, on the fossil fuel space, and it’s not going to surrounding regulatory policy, it’s going to be surrounding technology," he said.

He said he wants to see the government focus more on research and development.

Watts also said overregulation of the industry has hurt jobs and progress, but that’s been changing in the past several months.

“In the Trump administration, people in those federal agencies have started to say, 'This is an overregulation in this case. The regulatory policy here has hurt jobs,'" Watts said.

He says Environmental Protection Agency leader Scott Pruitt, also of Oklahoma, has a good understanding of the oil and gas industry.

--Follow Nadya Faulx on Twitter @NadyaFaulx.

To contact KMUW News or to send in a news tip, reach us at news@kmuw.org.

Copyright 2017 KMUW | NPR for Wichita

Nadya joined KMUW in May 2015 (which will sound more impressive when it’s not June 2015) after a year at a newspaper in western North Dakota, where she did not pick up an accent.