BATON ROUGE, La. (KLFY) – The oil and gas industry has seen a downturn in jobs over the past couple of months and Tuesday afternoon hundreds joined together in Baton Rouge to stand up for energy jobs during Oil & Gas Industry Day.

“The industry means so much to Louisiana, affects so many people directly and indirectly, and so it’s good to get our message out and to remind the general public exactly how many lives are affected by the oil and gas operations in Louisiana,” said Bryan Hanks, Louisiana Oil & Gas Association Chairman.

Several organizations hosted the event to give attendees the opportunity to discuss issues impacting the state’s industry.

“Obviously with the low oil prices, and we’ve had low gas prices for a long time, we have a lot of these folks who are really struggling,” said Gov. John Bel Edwards.

Gov. Edwards says it’s important that oil companies remain profitable, so that people can be employed within the sector and the economy doesn’t take a hit.

“We lost alot of workers. I think somewhere around 12,000 last year in Louisiana alone,” said Congressman Charles Boustany Jr.

Gov. Edwards says because of the downturn, the industry was not tapped as a source of revenue during the current legislative session.

“We didn’t do anything directly targeting oil and gas companies for revenue, and that’s part of being a good partner and understanding that even though I’m calling for shared sacrifice, there’s some places where it just isn’t appropriate to go and that’s one of them,” said Edwards.

Industry leaders said after Tuesday their hope is to state where the current industry is in terms of jobs and to discuss what the legislature has done so far.