American Petroleum Institute President Jack Gerard today said he is optimistic President Obama will approve the Keystone XL pipeline, a move that would follow through on the administration's promise to promote an "all of the above" energy platform.

In a wide-ranging speech and news conference today in Washington, D.C., Gerard also implored Congress to "do no harm" to an industry that he said contributes $545 billion in annual economic stimulus, has strengthened the nation's energy security and is lowering the cost of fuel for manufacturers.

He said the industry already pays more than its fair share in taxes and should not be penalized as Congress seeks new revenues to address its ballooning deficit. Higher taxes could discourage new energy investments, thereby reducing overall government revenue, he warned.

Gerard said the president could create thousands of new jobs immediately by approving Keystone.

"We're encouraged by what we're hearing from the White House," Gerard said of Keystone. "If you look at it from a jobs perspective ... I think it would be an early indication of the president's commitment based on what he promised the American people."

In his 40-minute speech, Gerard touched on a handful of other policy priorities at API, including tax reform, improved access to federal lands and waters, and prevention of new regulations on hydraulic fracturing, which he warned would be unnecessarily duplicative. He also said relations between the oil and gas industry and the White House have thawed considerably in the past six months (see related story).

He urged the Obama administration to heed what is happening in states such as North Dakota, where the use of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling has led to an explosion in production, rocketing the state to the second-largest producer over the past few years.

Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, an incoming Democrat from North Dakota, attended the speech.

Gerard said Congress should also work to expand drilling access on federal lands and waters, specifically off the coast of Virginia and in the southern Atlantic, where development enjoys bipartisan support.

"With a newly elected Congress and a president beginning his second term, we are standing on the threshold of a new year, one that presents tremendous opportunities to move forward on building our economy and creating jobs for Americans who are looking for work," he said.

He said he is hopeful Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the incoming chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, will be able to agree with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the committee's ranking member, on how to share revenues from offshore energy production with adjacent states, a key sticking point for many coastal lawmakers.

When asked whether the recent grounding of Royal Dutch Shell PLC's drillship in Alaska is a warning sign that the industry is not ready to expand drilling to frontier regions, Gerard said that the grounding was a transportation incident, not a drilling problem, and that Arctic development is already highly regulated.

He also warned the Obama administration not to impose duplicative regulations on hydraulic fracturing on public lands, saying governors have already moved to regulate the technology.

"We welcome robust, appropriate regulation," he said. "We discourage duplicate regulations that would create conflict and create disincentive to produce the nation's energy."

He also urged the administration to promote opportunities to develop oil shale in the Rocky Mountain West, where the United States is believed to contain three times as much oil as Saudi Arabia's reserves. Oil shale, not to be confused with shale oil, has yet to be produced commercially in the West, despite many decades of research.

Gerard said new technologies could change that, similar to how they changed the way companies produce shale resources in North Dakota, Pennsylvania and Texas.