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Who's the Oklahoma Oil Billionaire Shaping Trump's Energy Policy?

Brian Hardzinski
/
KGOU

Donald Trump’s energy platform champions coal, promotes drilling, and supports the easing of regulations on fracking. If it sounds like the Trump energy platform was created with fossil fuel companies in mind, that’s because the GOP candidate’s policies were partly crafted by an Oklahoma oil billionaire.

As StateImpact Oklahoma reports, Trump energy advisor Harold Hamm is known as a godfather of fracking. Trump himself recently referred to the oil magnate as “the King of Energy.”

Hamm, the son of Oklahoma sharecroppers, is the founder of Continental Resources. His journey from gas station worker to oil billionaire has made him something of a folk hero in the energy world. The fracking mogul has been named as a possible energy secretary if Trump wins in November. Hamm has repeatedly expressed skepticism about the threat of global climate change, once saying: “Climate change isn’t our biggest problem. It’s Islamic terrorism.”