"This is a tired old argument we've been hearing for two years now," said Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, the oil and gas industry's main lobby in Washington. "If the president were serious about job creation, he would be working with us to develop American oil and gas by American workers for American consumers."

Mr. Gerard noted that there was bipartisan opposition to lifting the tax breaks, adding: "The federal government by no stretch of the imagination subsidizes the oil industry. The oil industry subsidizes the federal government at a rate of $95 million a day."