Harold Hamm Featured In Newsweek/NBC News; Enough OOIP To Meet The Nation's Needs For Hundreds Of Years

I don't often have articles that I consider must-read articles (maybe only ten/week), but this is one of them: Harold Hamm feature in Newsweek/NBC News.

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.

And more:

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. 

Last week President Obama awarded sixteen men and women the Presidential Medal of Freedom. All sixteen are very, very deserving, but I can identify four in the following list that pale in comparison to what Harold Hamm has done for this country.

Here were the recipients:

Ernie Banks, Ben Bradlee, former President Bill Clinton, Daniel Inouye (posthumous), Daniel Kahneman, Richard Lugar, Loretta Lynn, Mario Molina, Sally Ride (posthumous), Bayard Rustin (posthumous), Arturo Sandoval, Dean Smith, Gloria Steinem, Cordy Tindell "C.T." Vivian, Patricia Wald, and Oprah Winfrey.

Politicians, artists, a talk show host, a minister, an athlete, a coach, a teacher, but no room for one "harold hamm." And so it goes.