Executive Spotlight: Harold Hamm
Harold Hamm may well be one of the most colorful oil and gas CEOs in the country. His storied past includes a series of firsts that landed him on the cover of Forbes, helped pioneer the development of the Bakken, and is now one of the nation’s 10 largest producers. After asking, “Fill ‘er up?” in his teens, Hamm went to work in the Oklahoma oil patch. At age 21, he founded Continental Resources. Later on he began using horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing in the Bakken, where he remains the largest leaseholder today. But with the advent of the latest drilling and completion technologies and his proprietary ECO-Pad®, Hamm never lost sight of Oklahoma’s oil and gas riches where he bought a sizeable chunk in the SCOOP and STACK. Continental’s Q2 earnings and profit might’ve fallen short of estimates this year due to weaker oil and gas prices, but that hasn’t stopped Hamm from raising its full-year production outlook and lowering guidance for production cost. And it won’t stop us from watching what’s next for Continental.