Green Stumbles: President Obama is Riding the Wrong Horse on Energy

The continental US oil renaissance is in full bloom from North Dakota to Texas to Ohio. Oil man Harold Hamm, the Oklahoma-based founder and CEO of Continental Resources, is right in the middle of the action. Here are some of his thoughts:

How much oil does Bakken have? The official estimate of the U.S. Geological Survey a few years ago was between four and five billion barrels. Mr. Hamm disagrees: "No way. We estimate that the entire field, fully developed, in Bakken is 24 billion barrels."

If he's right, that'll double America's proven oil reserves. "Bakken is almost twice as big as the oil reserve in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska," he continues. According to Department of Energy data, North Dakota is on pace to surpass California in oil production in the next few years. Mr. Hamm explains over lunch in Washington, D.C., that the more his company drills, the more oil it finds _WSJ

The more they drill, the more oil they find. And they are constantly learning better methods to drill in the right spots. Industry and transportation will be relying on liquid fuels like petroleum for decades more. It is a good thing that there are people who are still saying, "drill, baby, drill!"

"President Obama is riding the wrong horse on energy," he adds. We can't come anywhere near the scale of energy production to achieve energy independence by pouring tax dollars into "green energy" sources like wind and solar, he argues. It has to come from oil and gas. _WSJ

The stumbling of green energy -- particularly big wind and big solar -- and green jobs, is becoming a trademark of the Obama energy reich's problems. Here is more from Walter Russell Mead:

As the Energy Department hustled to get another $4.7 billion in loan guarantees for green tech companies out the door before time ran out and the program ended last week, yet another solar panel manufacturer was wilting in the sun, and the green jobs scam was looking more threadbare than ever.

...The collapse of the green political structure (cap and trade plus global carbon treaty) and the transformation of the American fossil fuel supply have dramatically weakened the case for alternative energy. Investors take heed. _WRM

Mead makes an important point: Obama rode into the White House on a green horse, promising to make sea levels decline and the earth to heal. Such pompous faux-environmental rhetoric was overblown at the time, and it has become positively ludicrous now.

In the face of ClimateGate and a host of other revelations of wrongdoing by the IPCC and climate insiders, the climate hysteria bandwagon has broken down by the side of the road. And that gathering crowd of jeering onlookers has not come to assist in repairs.