Who Is Harold Hamm?

Source: David Shankbone

American Oilman and Billionaire 20 Times Over• Born in Oklahoma in 1945 (68

years old).

• Founded Continental Resources as Shelly Dean Oil Co. in 1967.

• Owns 126 million shares, good for 68% of the company.

• Hamm’s stake is worth around $20 billion, making him one of the 30 most wealthy Americans.

Image source: Continental Resources

Humble Roots

The youngest of 13 siblings, Hamm grew up near Enid, Oklahoma.

His father was a sharecropper and minister.

Enid has the largest grain storage capacity of any U.S. city.

Hamm has only a high-school degree, having learned about the oil business from the ground up, in the field.

Image source: Continental Resources

Advocacy for U.S. Oil Led to Massive Discoveries

•Hamm is one of the largest individual owners of oil in the U.S. through his stake in Continental Resources.

•Continental’s proven reserves are a product of Hamm’s insistence that shale reserves could be produced with the right techniques.

Image source: Continental Resources

Early Advocate of “Unconventional” Oil

•Hamm’s Continental Resources was one of the first companies to use hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” combined with horizontal drilling.

•In 2004, Continental completed the “Robert Heuer 1-17R” well, the first commercially successful well to be fracked and horizontally drilled in the Bakken.

Image source: U.S. EPA

Image source: U.S. NOAA

How Hamm Beat the Bakken•The Bakken field in North Dakota was discovered in the 1950s.

•It’s “tight formation” -- i.e., oil contained inside shale rock formations -- broke the hearts (and budgets) of oil producers for decades.

•At Hamm’s insistence, Continental spent years (and millions) before finally figuring out the techniques to unlock the Bakken’s resources.

Image source: N.D. Dept of Mineral Resources

Turning North Dakota Into an Oil Power•North Dakota is now the second-largest oil-producing state behind Texas.

•It surpassed 1 million barrels per day in production in April 2014.

•This rate of production would make it one of the 20 largest oil-producing countries in the world.

•Continental Resources is the largest producer and landholder in the state.

Joining Fellow Billionaires in Philanthropy•Harold Hamm has signed The Giving Pledge, a commitment initiated by fellow billionaires Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to give at least half of their wealth to charitable causes.

•A Type II diabetic, Hamm has already donated millions of dollars to diabetes research, including a $10 million donation to the University of Oklahoma to fund the Harold Hamm Diabetes Center.

•From Hamm’s letter to The Giving Pledge:

“Through our giving pledge, we hope to encourage others to commit their time and resources to worthy causes that will enable other people with ambition and tenacity to achieve their goals.”

Bonus Trivia: How Hamm Made Buffett Money•The incredibly fast expansion of oil production in North Dakota has led to a serious lack of pipeline infrastructure.

•So far in 2014, nearly two-thirds of the state’s oil production has been shipped via rail.

•BNSF Railways, owned by Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, has generated more than $12.5 billion in profit since 2009, in no small part due to shipping crude oil.

BNSF locomotive hauling crude oil. Source: Todd Murray.

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