Inside Energy has been recognized for work completed in 2014 with a National Headliner Award. Reporter Dan Boyce and Data Journalist Jordan Wirfs-Brock won second place in the “Feature and Human Interest Story” category for their story, “Who Owns Oil And Gas?”.
The story came about after weeks of research and data analysis looking into the finances that support the oil and gas industry. As always at Inside Energy, we’re trying to find the place where people and power intersect – so how do we make a story about oil and gas financing compelling?
Dan decided that he would bravely dissect his own, hardly robust, retirement account and analyze how much of that account is invested in oil and gas. The story revealed that while oil and gas make up about 9 percent of the stock market, investments in Dan’s account amounted to about 6 percent, or $243.
The story also featured one of our first data interactives, a slide show demonstrating how the funds broke down:
An average American's retirement investments in oil and gas. This fund is a Roth IRA from T. Rowe Price, based on a goal of retiring in 2055.
Each one of these is managed by T. Rowe Price, and has a different goal - for example, international growth, high yield, mirroring the stock market.
Each separate fund has its own stock tickers, and also have to file reports regularly with the SEC.
Roughly 90% of this fund is invested in stocks, or equity, of publicly traded companies. Roughly 10% is invested in bonds. As we get closer to 2055, the fund will switch over to more of these safer bonds.
By looking at the filing for the 19 individual funds, we can know what portion of those funds are directly invested in oil and gas companies - anywhere between 0 and 18 percent. That portion is highlighted in orange.
Roughly 6 percent of this T. Rowe Price retirement account is directly invested in oil and gas companies. If you have a retirement account, your makeup of oil and gas investments probably looks very similar to this.
The National Headliner awards program was founded in 1934 by the Press Club of Atlantic City. It is one of the oldest and largest annual contests recognizing journalistic merit in the communications industry.
