Yesterday CNN published a Larry King Live interview featuring Chevron CEO David O’Reilly and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., senior attorney for the National Resource Defense Counsel.  A few of the points they made could have an impact on North Dakota’s role in providing energy across the nation.

• North Dakota is very well situated to provide wind energy for the broader United States.  Mr. Kennedy, quoted in the article: 

We have — the Midwest this is the Saudi Arabia of wind. We have enough harnessable wind energy in North Dakota, Kansas and Texas combined to supply all the electrical needs of our country, even if every American were driving an electric car.

• The debate between fossil fuels and alternative or renewable fuels isn’t an either/or situation.  Mr. O’Reilly said in the interview:

What bothers me about this is everyone portrays it as an either/or debate. It’s not and either/or debate. … We need alternative and we need efficiency and we need conventional oil and gas.

That second point seems to me to be a key talking point for North Dakota.  We have tremendous wind energy production potential.  We also have vast coal reserves and the remarkable Bakken oil shale formation. 

If we can get the rest of the country to see what we’ve got, we could help the United States not only become energy independent, but perhaps become energy exporters, as well.  ND’s energy potential could help the entire world, and it’s just good business sense.