PRESS RELEASE from Romney for President

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE	CONTACT: Romney Press Office
March 1, 2012

   
Boston, MA – Today at Wrigley Mechanical in Fargo, North Dakota, Mitt Romney announced the support of  Harold Hamm, the founder and CEO of Continental Resources and a pioneer in the extraction of oil from the massive Bakken formation in North Dakota and Montana.  Hamm will serve as Chairman of Romney’s Energy Policy Advisory Group, working with the campaign to assemble a broader policy team and develop a comprehensive national energy policy that creates jobs, protects the environment, and guarantees a reliable, affordable supply of energy to the American economy and to American families.
 
“Energy is not just an industry, it is the lifeblood of our economy,” said Romney.  “An affordable, reliable supply of energy is crucial to the bottom line of every business and every family.”  Romney noted that the average family spends more than twice as much on energy as it pays in income taxes each year, and that the increase in gas prices under President Obama has had a comparable effect to doubling income taxes for the middle class.
 
“President Obama has achieved his goal of making energy more expensive in this country,” said Romney.  “We must abandon his course of restricting supply, increasing regulation, and hoping for miraculous new technologies to save the day.  Instead, we should take advantage of the enormous reserves of oil, coal, and natural gas; the potential of nuclear; and the innovation of our private sector; which will power this nation for the century to come.”
 
“I am proud to support Mitt because I believe he is the only candidate with the private sector experience that we so desperately need in Washington,” said Hamm.  “As a businessman myself, I am acutely aware of how the Obama Administration has hurt the efforts of entrepreneurs and innovators, and how outrageously he has attacked energy producers in particular.  Mitt’s goal of cheap, plentiful energy for the American economy offers the American people a stark alternative to President Obama’s goal of driving prices higher.”
 
 
Background On Harold Hamm:
 
Harold Hamm Is The Chairman & CEO Of Continental Resources.  Hamm began his career as an oil truck operator at the age of 18.  He founded Continental Resources in 1967, at the age of 22, and has built it into one of the nation’s largest independent energy companies.  Hamm and Continental are responsible for leading the development of the Bakken oil field in North Dakota, from which the company now produces more than 80,000 barrels of domestic oil each day in regions that were believed to contain no oil reserves only a few years ago.
 
 
Mitt Romney’s Plan For Affordable, Reliable Energy To Power The American Economy:
 
As president, Mitt Romney will make every effort to safeguard the environment, but he will be mindful at every step of also protecting the jobs of American workers. This will require putting conservative principles into action.
 
Significant Regulatory Reform
 
The first step will be a rational and streamlined approach to regulation, which would facilitate rapid progress in the development of our domestic reserves of oil and natural gas and allow for further investment in nuclear power.
 
·         Establish fixed timetables for all resource development approvals
·         Create a one-stop shop to streamline permitting process for approval of common activities
·         Implement fast-track procedures for companies with established safety records to conduct pre-approved activities in pre-approved areas
·         Ensure that environmental laws properly account for cost in the regulatory process
·         Amend the Clean Air Act to exclude carbon dioxide from its purview
·         Expand the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s capabilities for approval of additional nuclear reactor designs
·         Streamline NRC processes to ensure that licensing decisions for reactors on or adjacent to approved sites, using approved designs, are complete within two years
 
Increasing Production
 
The United States is blessed with a cornucopia of carbon-based energy resources. Developing them has been a pathway to prosperity for the nation in the past and offers similar promise for the future.
 
·         Conduct a comprehensive survey of America’s energy reserves
·         Open America’s energy reserves for development
·         Expand opportunities for U.S. resource developers to forge partnerships with neighboring countries
·         Support construction of pipelines to bring Canadian oil to the United States
·         Prevent overregulation of shale gas development and extraction
 
Research And Development
 
Government has a role to play in innovation in the energy industry. History shows that the United States has moved forward in astonishing ways thanks to national investment in basic research and advanced technology. However, we should not be in the business of steering investment toward particular politically favored approaches. That is a recipe for both time and money wasted on projects that do not bring us dividends. The failure of windmills and solar plants to become economically viable or make a significant contribution to our energy supply is a prime example.
 
·         Concentrate alternative energy funding on basic research
·         Utilize long-term, apolitical funding mechanisms like ARPA-E for basic research