The billionaire behind America's 'great renaissance of oil'

[IDemo]

OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. — In the history of oil, this fall is a tipping point, the moment America gurgles past Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the world’s petroleum king.

The man most responsible is Harold Hamm, 67, a drawling, blue-eyed billionaire, a sharecropper’s son who grew to be the richest energy mogul in America. He was the first to profitably “frack” North Dakota oil wells, leading a revolution in the way the nation coaxes energy from the earth and draining momentum from the search for cleaner fuel sources. His company, Continental Resources, has quintupled in value in a matter of years, emerging as a swaggering promoter of eco-friendly, effectively infinite oil — along with all the supposed good that flows from it.

Now Hamm seems ready to fight anyone who says otherwise. “Anti-frackers are disingenuous,” he said. “They bow to the religion of environmentalism.”

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“Some of the extremists are calling it carbon pollution,” he joked between appreciative bites of cheeseburger. “I mean, all of us breathe out carbon dioxide. Are we going to quit breathing?”

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/11/04/21266984-meet-harold-hamm-the-billionaire-behind-americas-great-renaissance-of-oil?lite

[sendero]

1. I saw a puff piece featuring this douchbag..

... on the local news last night. He said that "the US has more oil than Saudi Arabia". Well, technically that might be true. The vast Saudi fields are nearing depletion. But what he DIDN'T say, at least directly, is that the oil we have is costly and difficult to extract.

When oil is selling for $100 a barrel and it costs $80 a barrel to extract, there is still a profit to be made. When that spread closes, and it will and soon, well not so much.

It's too bad that we're going to suck up the last bits of oil we have and burn them now when we should really be saving that oil for a time when we cannot get any on the global market for any price. But where's the profit in that?