When Donald Trump becomes the nation's 45th president on Friday, the "disastrous results" of energy overregulation during the past eight years will start to be dismantled, said billionaire oilman Harold Hamm, a member of Trump's inauguration committee.
Hamm — founder, chairman and CEO of Oklahoma-based Continental Resources and a Trump advisor during the campaign — told CNBC on Thursday that getting rid of President Barack Obama-era regulations will be a "Day One agenda" for the new administration.
"I think it'll be immediate," said Hamm. "[Overregulation] is hurting everybody. It's not just business. But consumers are also paying for that. So it's very costly to the American economy."
One of the regulations that Hamm wants rolled back has to do with methane gas — the subject of a rule issued by the Environmental Protection Agency last year to limit emissions of that gas at the sites where oil and natural gas are being produced.
"We try to sell every bit of gas produced," Hamm argued. "We have more natural gas escaping under the streets here in Washington, D.C., than we do the entire industry."
Hamm was in Washington for Thursday's interview on "Squawk on the Street."
At one point, there was speculation that Hamm might be a Trump Energy secretary pick. But the president-elect ended up choosingRick Perry, his onetime rival for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination.
Perry, who began his confirmation process on Thursday, told lawmakers he regrets his past call for the abolishment of the Energy Department.
While listing three agencies he wanted to eliminate during CNBC's Republican presidential primary debate in 2011, the then-Texas governor drew a blank and could not name the third one, which was Energy.