For the third year running, that would be none other than the prosperous and bustling North Dakota, via CNN Money:

Propelled by a massive energy boom, North Dakota once again captured the title of the nation’s hottest economy, with a growth rate five times the national average.

North Dakota’s economy posted a 13.4% growth rate in 2012, according to a report released Thursday by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. That’s nearly three times as fast as the number two state, Texas, and trounces the national average of 2.5%.

This is the third year in a row that North Dakota took the top spot in BEA’s state-by-state report on gross domestic product (GDP). The muscle behind the boom is a surge in oil production from the Bakken Shale, an underground rock formation in the northwestern part of the state. …

The boom has attracted workers from all over the country and rippled out to incorporate not only the oil and gas drilling sectors but also other industries that supply them, including wholesale goods and transportation. …

As I bemoaned yesterday, the White House is declining to put out signals that they would be at all on board with revising the pathetic excuse for a 5-year drilling plan of which we’re currently in the midst; groups in both the House and Senate have been mounting a recent push to initiate a new plan for offshore drilling that would allow energy companies access in the currently restricted Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and Interior Secretary Jewell pretty much shot it down. The Obama administration will hem and haw all day long about how America’s oil-and-gas production has actually increased during President Obama’s tenure and they’re really, sincerely all about an “all of the above” energy strategy, except that most of the increases in production has come from state and private lands. Every drilling permit application that the Obama administration declines or neglects to approve is an opportunity foregone for economic growth the likes of which North Dakota is still going gangbusters.

Granted, North Dakota is a bit of a special case with the Bakken Shale formation, but there are plenty of opportunities out there from which Americans are being disallowed access. The WSJ reported yesterday that Americans are coming kinda’-sorta’ close to rebuilding the level of wealth we had just before the recession — which in and of itself is pretty pathetic. It’s a marker of the now lost time during which we could have been growing at a much more robust and new wealth- and job-creating rate, if not for the many economically soul-crushing policies and practices of the Obama administration.