Mitt Romney Announces Support of Harold Hamm

Press Release

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.

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