Rep.-elect from North Dakota placed on Natural Resources panel

Rep.-elect Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said Tuesday that his state’s energy resources likely factored into his House Natural Resources and Science, Space and Technology committee assignments, according to The Associated Press.

Cramer advocates expanding oil-and-gas drilling, which has been a boon for his state’s economy. The state also contains sizable coal deposits.

Cramer, who opposes regulating greenhouse gas emissions, said on the campaign trail that “it would be immoral” not to tap the state’s fossil fuel reserves, adding that, “God put it there for us.”

North Dakota also gets the nation’s third-highest amount of its power from wind, according to the American Wind Energy Association.

But Cramer said during his House race that he wants to let a 2.2-cent per kilowatt-hour wind incentive expire, a position that is at odds with the state’s governor, Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), retiring Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and Sen.-elect Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.).

The domestic oil-and-gas revolution has perhaps been the most transformative in North Dakota, where drilling in the Bakken shale formation has raised personal wealth and employed new workers by the thousands.

Technology advances — such as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking — have helped tap those hard-to-reach hydrocarbons trapped in tight shale rock formations.

Fracking injects a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and chemicals into rock formations to access oil and gas.

Cramer will have a chance to weigh in on other energy technology issues, as the Science, Space and Technology Committee looks at federal research programs, including energy.

Republicans have pointed to examples like the Bakken formation, which is on private land, as reason to open more federal land for drilling. They say more fossil fuel development would spur economic growth.

GOP lawmakers have criticized Democrats and the Obama administration for keeping some areas, such as ocean waters off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, off limits to drilling.

That critique has been particularly acute in the Natural Resources Committee, which oversees energy development on federal lands.

President Obama contends oil-and-gas drilling during his tenure is higher than under former President George W. Bush.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration announced monthly domestic oil production hit a 15-year high in September.

But Republicans say that has occurred in spite of the president’s policies, and note that most of the increase has occurred on state and private lands, while production on federal land dipped in 2011.