‘Just flat wrong,’ and unfairly limiting oil prices, he says Cites new driller discipline seeking return on investments Billionaire oilman Harold Hamm says the government was way too optimistic with its prediction of more than 1 million new barrels a day in U.S. production, and the snafu is “distorting” global crude prices. This year’s rise is likely to be closer to about 500,000 barrels, far off an initial forecast by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, according to Hamm, the chairman of Continental Resources Inc. and a pioneer in the shale industry. The EIA projection is “just flat wrong,” failing to take into account a new discipline among U.S. drillers, Hamm said in an interview Thursday on Bloomberg TV. “We have capability of producing a whole lot, but you have to get a return on investment,” he said, adding, “that’s where people have been this last quarter and this year.” […]