Companies estimate that the boom from new oil drilling will create more than two million new jobs, directly or indirectly, and bring tens of billions of dollars to the states where the fields are located, which include traditional oil sites like Texas and Oklahoma, industrial stalwarts like Ohio and Michigan and even farm states like Kansas.

The way that increased oil supplies lead to more jobs is by bringing down the price of oil. This suggests that if environmental issues are ignored, the new drilling could increase U.S. output by approximately 1 million barrels a day. This would be an increase in world supply of roughly 1 percent. Given standard estimates of the elasticity of supply and demand for oil, this would be expected to lower world oil prices by around 2.5 percent.

A 2.5 percent decline in the price of oil could be expected to generate about 40,000-50,000 additional jobs, less than 1/20th of the low-end job estimate given by the oil industry.