Meet Harold Hamm, the billionaire behind America's 'great renaissance of oil'
Meet Harold Hamm, the billionaire behind
America's 'great renaissance of oil'.
OKLAHOMA
CITY,
Okla. — In the history of oil, this fall is a tipping
point, the moment America gurgles past
Saudi Arabia and
Russia to become the world's petroleum king.
The man most responsible is Harold Hamm, 67, a drawling, blue-eyed billionaire, a sharecropper's son who grew to be the richest energy mogul in America. He was the first to profitably "frack"
North Dakota oil wells, leading a revolution in the way the nation coaxes energy from the earth and draining momentum from the search for cleaner fuel sources. His company,
Continental Resources, has quintupled in value in a matter of years, emerging as a swaggering promoter of eco-friendly, effectively infinite oil — along with all the supposed good that flows from it.Now
Hamm seems ready to fight anyone who says otherwise. "Anti-frackers are disingenuous," he said. "They bow to the religion of environmentalism."
In a series of interviews with
NBC News, the self-described nature-lover crowed about "the great renaissance of oil" he helped create and ridiculed those who blame oil companies for warming the climate or poisoning the earth.
"Some of the extremists are calling it carbon pollution," he joked between appreciative bites of cheeseburger
. "I mean, all of us breathe out carbon dioxide. Are we going to quit breathing?"
'This is a new era'
You'll find no better guide to the new world of energy than Hamm. He fell in love with oil as a gas-pumping teenager, borrowed money to become a wildcatter in his 20s, and spent the next four decades finding treasure where others failed or never tried.
Last month, when
U.S. Department of Energy data projected that America had become the globe's new fuel pump and fuse box,
Texas remained the biggest producer of crude oil. North Dakota, however, showed the fastest growth, approaching a million barrels of oil a day, up from 10,
000 barrels a day in
2003 — and powering the largest five-year petroleum increase in
U.S. history.
"This is a new era," the head of the U.S.
Energy Information Administration said at the time, "that you wouldn't in a million years have dreamed about."
Hamm did more than just dream about it. He recognized the potential of North Dakota's
Bakken oil field, which now produces more crude than
Alaska's
Prudhoe Bay, and his company remains the area's largest lease holder. This month Continental Resources told investors that the region contains enough recoverable oil to double the official count of U.S. reserves and enough "oil in place" to meet the nation's needs for hundreds of years. While those claims have not been verified by regulators,
Hamm's track record makes them hard to doubt.
"He is an expert at execution," said
Rudy Hokanson, an investment analyst for
Barrington Research in
Chicago, "someone who creates maximum wealth where others may think small."
a small
Oklahoma town on the
American oil boom that's leading to dropping gas prices across the country.