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Politics and Culture in Plain Talk.
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We need a big, beautiful ballroom, and a Golden Dome.¹ Then we’ll be safe. Then everything will be perfect.
Wait! We also need a haughty Persian cat to sit on Stephen Miller’s lap, and one for Jeff Bezos, too: It’s okay to have more than one villain in our production of Golden Dome, the first truly American James Bond film. We do need a lead actor with a British accent, though. This being a Trump administration production, the artist formerly known as Prince Andrew should fit the role. He will have a lot of old friends on the set, and our appropriately aged Bond Girl will put her hair in pigtails, if that helps.
I know my audience: a significant number of readers are now worried for the Persian cats. Let’s talk about the Persian Gulf instead.
On April 2nd, Brent crude oil touched $128 a barrel. In a sane, stable market, that would have set off a frenzy of drilling in the Bakken oilfields here in North Dakota.² Rig hands would be flying in from all over the United States to get some of that sweet overtime pay. A good chunk of them would be spending too much of their pay at local bars, restaurants, and man-toy dealerships. The state government’s coffers would be filling up at a faster rate. None of that is happening.
Right now there are approximately 25 drilling rigs and eight frack crews active across the entire state of North Dakota, an increase of zero since the end of February. In its April outlook, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) noted that North Dakota operators were “not expected to significantly increase drilling activity” despite prices approaching $100 a barrel. Major energy companies have already set their 2026 capital budgets and, as the state’s own regulators put it, they aren’t going to change them until there is “price stabilization.”
The Bakken hasn’t gone anywhere. The oil is there. The pipelines are there. But the people with the capital to develop it won’t pull the trigger because nobody knows what this war is going to do next week, next month, or next quarter. An unnecessary war in the Persian Gulf and a scattershot trade war have increased risk, so shareholders would prefer dividends over capital investment.
There’s also a longer-term concern that rarely gets discussed in the boom-or-bust conversation. Industry consolidation has fundamentally changed how the Bakken and other oil fields respond to price signals. A handful of very large companies control most of the production. Those companies run on annual capital budgets set months in advance. They don’t chase spikes. When prices are volatile, they don’t drill more, they manage risk. The benefit of high prices flows primarily to shareholders of large corporations, not to new jobs, new leases, or new investment.
Before the war, the global oil market was oversupplied and prices were falling. The EIA was projecting WTI crude prices in the low $50s for all of 2026. We were heading into a period of cheap, stable energy. Then our “stable genius” leader knee-jerked us all into a period of expensive, unstable energy prices. (I wrote about the failure of the Kushner/Witkoff team’s negotiations last week, in case you missed it.) It makes one wonder if all the gears are turning under the president’s golden dome.
Two days ago, on the 28th of April, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, JD Vance, and Donald Trump met with oil executives at the White House. The next day, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump told aides to brace for an extended blockade on Iranian ports. Imagine that: right after meeting with executives from big oil companies, the president decided to extend an operation that is profiting those companies. The praise for Donald Trump in that meeting must have been beyond effusive.
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I’m afraid Andrew Albert Christian Edward Mountbatten-Windsor and his pigtailed Bond Girl are not going to sweep in to save us. The people who blundered us into this war will not pay the price for it. Regular Americans are already paying the price at the gas pump and the grocery store. If the war escalates further, more of our sons and daughters could pay a far greater price. Our consolation prizes will be a ballroom, an arch, and a sitting president’s picture on our passports and his signature on our currency.
I’m running for Congress because my state deserves a representative who understands both the economic stakes of energy policy and the human stakes of foreign policy and who demands that Congress take seriously its oversight role on those issues. What happens in the Strait of Hormuz shows up in cities and towns across the country. The decisions made in Washington have real consequences for the rest of us.
No cats were harmed in the writing of this newsletter.
I’m running for the U.S. House of Representatives because you deserve representatives who answer to you. Not to big oil companies. Not to Bond villains. Not to those who reap the benefits but don’t pay the costs.
If that’s the kind of representation you’re looking for, I need your help to get there. A contribution of any size — $10, $25, $50 — keeps this campaign funded, this newsletter in front of new readers, and this message in the conversation.
Hammer for ND, PO Box 58, Minot ND, 58702-0058
Punching Up. Always.
The “Golden Dome” missile defense system is a still mostly theoretical initiative announced by President Donald Trump in January 2025.
Light, sweet crude from the Bakken is tied to the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) Crude price, but Brent and WTI rise and fall together in an international market.
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