A Question Many Are Asking, I'm Sure -- And CLR Fields It Brilliantly -- August 10, 2019

Compare this back and forth with the "back and forth" one might expect at a Tesla earnings call.

From the transcript:

Q:

And my kind of related question, if I may, is -- and I don't meant to sound petulant in any way, but what is the value of Continental being a public company?

Harold Hamm:

Okay, I'll take that, Doug. First of all, on CAPEX, we've -- by releasing seven rigs we certainly expect that CAPEX in second-half of the year is normally much slower. And John went through the quarter-by-quarter rundown. So will we be spot on with the [$2.6 billion]. I think we're going to be really close, and we certainly have capability here to adjust on the fly as we go forward.

But talk about the value of being public, in today's market we don't see a lot of value in it, just to tell you like we see it here today, but we can't control the market. We can control what we're dealing with here on a daily basis. And that's what we're doing. We didn't start a buyback program to go public or private. We think as long as value is not reflected in the stock we got to be buying it back, and that's what we're doing. And that's what we'll continue to do.

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Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, travel, career, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or what you think you may have read here.

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Comment: this might be as good a time as any to reiterate the purpose of the blog. This is not an investment site.

The "welcome/disclaimer" site is incredibly long but taken as a whole should give folks an idea what the blog is all about.

From the "welcome/disclaimer":

This is a blog, short for "web log," or diary.  It was started for my use only since HTML provided a great way to track the Bakken boom. I decided to open it to the public for various reasons which I discuss elsewhere [the short answer: others reading the blog and responding have taught me a lot about the Bakken].

I will make mistakes, and I have made some doozies. Most of the mistakes could have been avoided had I posted more slowly, and had the posts been reviewed by an expert in the oil and gas industry. If something looks wrong, it probably is. If a [material] mistake is brought to my attention, I will address it immediately. If I ever get the feeling that my posts on the Bakken are doing more harm than good, I will bring down the site. It is not my intention to mislead anyone on the Bakken.

The longer version:

Summary

• this is not an investment site
• "million dollar way" has nothing to do with investing; it comes from the metonym for US 2 & 85 leading north out of Williston where I grew up; the "million dollar way" was my "way out of Williston" literally, figuratively, and metaphorically
• the writer has no formal training and no experience in the oil and gas industry
• when the writer first started blogging, he knew nothing about horizontal drilling; he still knows very little
• the writer is inappropriately exuberant about the Bakken
• the writer is inappropriately exuberant about investment opportunities for those with long horizons, but has no formal training and/or education in investing
• this is a blog; it is difficult to separate fact from opinion on this blog and most other blogs
• all information on the Bakken is dynamic; information about the Bakken may change even as the post is being posted
• all information on the Bakken is posted in "good faith"
• non-Bakken information is generally tongue-in-cheek; the reader should presume such information is opinion
• posts on global warming and ObamaCare are there to help put the Bakken into perspective
• posts regarding the stock market and investing are there to help make sense of the Bakken; if one wants to better understand the Bakken, follow the money
• posts on Apple (AAPL) are there because I grew up with Apple computers and am fascinated with the business model; I used to say that I would never own shares of AAPL stock; that is no longer true
• politically the writer is a social conservative, a fan of Ronald Reagan; not a Republican 
• the writer does not watch television as a rule, so has no clue what talking heads are talking about on a real-time basis
• the writer has a very, very thin skin and never could have made it as a businessman in the real world
• the writer has a very, very thin skin and never could have survived the oil and gas industry
• the blog is nothing more than the idle comments I would have with friends at a local cafeteria in Williston
• the blog is full of typographical and factual errors; if something looks wrong, it probably is
• the blog is "for my use only" but folks are free to read it
• any photos folks send to me I assume are in the public domain unless otherwise stated by the sender
• the webmaster works very hard at keeping anonymous those readers who wish to remain anonymous but may not always succeed
• when it comes to the standard investment disclaimer, I use the same "philosophical" disclaimer that folks use at SeekingAlpha