If you predicted that, a year into the Biden presidency, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry would sit down in Washington DC to discuss American energy with Harold Hamm, the shale oil pioneer and former Donald Trump ally, then congrats: your prize is on the way.

But a meeting there was, on Jan 19.

Both men are very wealthy. But it’s otherwise hard to imagine a greater contrast than that between Hamm, the self-made Oklahoman born into poverty, and Kerry, the French-speaking Ivy League-graduate who oozes East Coast elite status.

RELATED:

CERAWeek: John Kerry Calls Ukraine Crisis a ‘Defining Moment’ for the Century

Hamm told the Financial Times about his Kerry meeting while he was in Oklahoma City recently to interview Devon Energy CEO Rick Muncrief. Hamm said Kerry contacted him after the Financial Times reported in a profile of Hamm last month that the climate envoy had not replied to Hamm’s earlier requests for a meeting.

“We talked a lot,” Hamm told the Financial Times. The shale baron said he took issue with some of Kerry’s claims.

Financial Times Unlikely Meeting - Harold Hamm
Harold Hamm

“He’s always throwing these numbers about oil and gas being subsidized,” Hamm said. “‘John,’ I said, “I’ve drilled more dry holes than anybody alive. And nobody ever paid me a dime.”

(Critics of U.S. oil and gas subsidies, which the Biden administration pledged to reduce, cite a huge array of them.)

News of the encounter won’t help dispel notions that, in the face of surging oil prices, the Biden administration—which initially appeared so focused on combating climate change—is warming to the American fossil fuel industry, the biggest source of American emissions.

From the shale patch to the coal sector, American fossil fuels are now booming. The president’s pledge to stop fracking on federal lands has fallen apart. The administration’s much-vaunted methane crackdown has been dismissed as too lenient by asset managers. White House officials, from the president down, have repeatedly called on oil producers to supply more petroleum.

Hamm says he isn’t a Republican or Democrat—he’s an “oilocrat”. But he has been a frequent voice in D.C. politics on both sides of the aisle, backing Donald Trump in recent years but also lobbying Barack Obama’s administration to legalize U.S. crude oil exports.

The two men debated methane pollution too, according to Hamm. Kerry cited the oil industry’s bad record. Hamm, who backed Trump’s efforts to scrap Obama-era methane pollution rules, disputed Kerry’s claim. “How damaging really is it?” Hamm asked.

Very, said the UN’s IPCC report. The Biden administration has made curbing methane—a virulent greenhouse gas—a cornerstone of its climate policy and Kerry was instrumental in a global agreement to reduce methane emissions, considered a priority in the climate fight. It seems unlikely that Hamm changed Kerry’s mind.

A state department spokesperson confirmed that the two men met and spoke briefly to discuss the clean energy transition and opportunities to address methane emissions. Hamm has also asked to meet Gina McCarthy, Biden’s domestic climate tsar.

This article is an excerpt of Energy Source, a twice-weekly energy newsletter from the Financial Times.