What oil & gas donors give in federal races

A sector phrase with a concentrated dollar total

$6,237,503 is the occupation-level dollar total. 4,385 is the itemization count. 449 is the donor-record count. Dividing dollars by lines yields about $1,422 per contribution. Dividing by donors yields about $13,892 per donor record. The repeat rate is about 10 itemizations per donor record. Four thousand-plus lines from 449 donor records is a concentrated pattern: fewer people and fewer receipts than many occupation strings with similar dollars.

Those means are arithmetic, not medians. The packet has no gift-size distribution, no party split, and no cycle series. A few large lines can lift $1,422 while most receipts stay smaller—or the reverse. This guide cites only the three harvested facts and the trivial ratios computed from them.

Mean dollars per donor record sit toward the high side among keys in this dollar band. A handful of large itemizations can move the occupation total more than they would in a two-thousand-person pool.

Industry language in the occupation box

Some donors write OIL & GAS; others write OIL AND GAS, OIL/GAS, or a specific title such as petroleum engineer. Those strings do not add into this total unless the occupation field is exactly OIL & GAS.

FEC Form 3 (candidate committees) and Form 3X (PACs and party committees) collect occupation as free text on itemized Schedule A. FEC.gov publishes what committees reported. There is no drop-down of job titles and no license check. LobbyVault groups rows whose occupation field equals OIL & GAS after indexing. OIL AND GAS, PETROLEUM ENGINEER, and ENERGY remain other occupation pages unless the extract normalized them to OIL & GAS.

What 449 donor records can and cannot show

449 donor records used OIL & GAS on at least one matching itemization. 449 donor records used this industry-as-occupation label. That is not a headcount of oil-and-gas workers. Many people in the sector file a real job title and never appear here.

A person who listed OIL & GAS on some gifts and a neighboring title on others will appear in both occupation totals for the respective lines. Occupation is stored per transaction, not as a lifetime identity field. Address variants can also split one human into more than one donor record.

Do not add this string to an industry page

Industry pages on LobbyVault group employer-side categories. Industry pages on LobbyVault are the better place for sector questions. This occupation page answers only what the occupation text OIL & GAS summed to. Adding the two double-counts overlapping rows. Adding $6,237,503 to an industry total double-counts overlapping itemizations. Use one filter at a time unless you are tracing a single row.

Open the OIL & GAS occupation page for the indexed line list. Use the occupations index to place this string next to neighboring labels. Independent expenditures are not contributions and are not inside $6,237,503.

How to cite the OIL & GAS occupation key

A usable public-record citation names the exact string: OIL & GAS itemizations in FEC bulk data indexed on LobbyVault sum to $6,237,503 on 4,385 contributions from 449 donor records. Add that the figure is itemized occupation money. Unitemized receipts never carry an occupation code, so they never enter the total.

Source: FEC Form 3/3X schedules. The facts do not encode party. Recipient committees are a different join. Do not read the total as the oil-and-gas industry’s federal giving. It is one occupation string.

Reading an ampersand sector label as job text

OIL & GAS in this extract is $6,237,503 on 4,385 itemizations from 449 donor records, or $6.2 million in compact millions. Those dollars are itemized activity on FEC Form 3 and Form 3X schedules indexed on LobbyVault from FEC.gov bulk data. Unitemized receipts never carry an occupation code, so they never enter the total. Refunds and memo entries follow FEC presentation in the underlying schedules; this guide does not invent a fourth occupation-level fact. An ampersand industry phrase in the occupation column is not an employer-sector rollup. The occupation field is donor-supplied free text, not a NAICS industry code and not a verified roster.

Arithmetic means on this key are about $1,422 per contribution and about $13,892 per donor record, with roughly 10 itemizations per donor record. Means are not medians. The packet has no gift-size distribution and no party split. OIL AND GAS, PETROLEUM ENGINEER, and ENERGY remain other occupation pages unless the extract normalized them to OIL & GAS. Combining those keys without naming each source total changes the unit from one FEC string to a homemade cluster.

Industry pages group employer-side categories and should not be added to $6,237,503. A public-record citation that stays inside the packet is: occupation equals OIL & GAS, dollars equal $6,237,503, contributions equal 4,385, donors equal 449. Candidate and committee pages hold the recipient side. LobbyVault does not infer motive from the occupation column.

Researchers who need cycle cuts, employer text, or recipient lists should leave this guide and open the live occupation hub. This file restates harvested packet facts only. Compact millions ($6.2 million) are the same headline amount as $6,237,503, rounded to one decimal place. Keep the contribution count and the donor-record count in any sentence that quotes the dollars, so readers can see the shape of OIL & GAS in this extract. Exact-string matching is the method. Anything else is a different query.

Questions

How much have oil & gas donors given in FEC records?

Itemizations that list OIL & GAS sum to $6,237,503 across 4,385 contributions and 449 donor records in the LobbyVault index of FEC bulk data. The total is an exact-string occupation filter. Occupation is self-reported free text on FEC Form 3 and Form 3X schedules. Unitemized receipts never enter this occupation total.

Is OIL & GAS an FEC industry code?

No. It is occupation free text. Some donors put a sector name in the job-title box. This page covers $6,237,503 from 4,385 contributions and 449 donors for that exact string. The occupation field is donor-typed on Form 3 and Form 3X. LobbyVault indexes exact strings from FEC.gov bulk data. Unitemized gifts never carry an occupation code.

Does this include petroleum engineers?

Only if they typed OIL & GAS in the occupation field. PETROLEUM ENGINEER is a different key. Mixing them would invent a combined energy total the packet does not contain. Cite the three packet facts with the exact occupation string. Source: FEC.gov Form 3/3X itemizations indexed on LobbyVault. Unitemized receipts are outside this total.

Where can I see the underlying receipts?

Open the OIL & GAS occupation page for the indexed table, then verify on FEC.gov. Industry pages group employer-side energy labels separately. The occupation total is $6,237,503. Confirm surprising amounts on the committee report at FEC.gov. Occupation matching is exact-string only. Unitemized receipts never enter this occupation total.