Barton thinks he stumped Energy Sec.

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) thinks he stumped Energy Secretary Steven Chu at a hearing today. He tweets:

I seemed to have baffled the Energy Sec with basic question – Where does oil come from? Check out the video: http://bit.ly/O4m0p #tcot

The video is from a subcommittee hearing on energy legislation during which Barton quizzed Chu, a Nobel prize-winning physicist, on oil formation. Here’s how it went down:

Barton: You’re our scientist. I have one simple question for you in the last six seconds. How did all the oil and gas get to Alaska and under the Arctic Ocean?

Chu: (laughs) This is a complicated story, but oil and gas is the result of hundreds of millions of years of geology, and in that time also the plates have moved around, and so, um, it’s the combination of where the sources of the oil and gas are–

Barton: But, but wouldn’t it obvious that at one time it was a lot warmer in Alaska and on the North Pole. It wasn’t a big pipeline that we created in Texas and shipped it up there and then put it under ground so that we can now pump it out and ship it back.

Chu: No. There are–there’s continental plates that have been drifting around throughout the geological ages–

Barton: So it just drifted up there?

Chu: That’s certainly what happened. And so it’s a result of things like that.

What do you think–did Barton really stump Chu?