If there’s a soul alive in the shale business who hasn’t heard of Harold Hamm, well, God bless your heart. The CEO of Okla. City-based Continental Resources is not only legend among American wildcatters who bet big and won big, he could also well be the GOAT of modern times. If you didn’t know, turning adversity into incredible opportunity has always been Hamm’s ethos. And the youngest of 13 siblings born in poverty, the son of a rural Okla., sharecropper, continues to lead the fight for America’s energy independence. The story of Hamm is still unfolding.

Reese Energy Consulting today spotlights Hamm and Continental, the latter of which recently nailed the king’s landing on the 2024 Enverus Top 100 Private Producers list with a whopping 690.3 MBOED. It’s not the first time either. Among the pioneers of horizontal drilling to introduce fracking starting in the Bakken, Hamm was an early “Do you hear me now?” voice to speak truth to power for U.S. energy security starting in the Carter years, and later an unstoppable presence in 2015 to help lift the ban on U.S. oil exports.

After massive success over the years in the Anadarko and Williston, Continental in 2021 entered the Permian in a dramatic way, diving headlong into the Delaware with 92,000 net acres and 50,000 net royalty acres in a $3.25 billion deal with Pioneer Natural Resources. Another bet and win for the company’s own game changer, who in the same year created the Hamm Institute for American Energy at Stillwater’s OSU. The institute last year gathered a who’s who of energy, political and financial leaders, along with two presidential candidates where Hamm hosted the nation’s first American Energy Security Summit. For a wildcatter born into poverty who believes, “Do whatever is necessary to follow and realize your dreams,” Hamm continues to educate, inspire, and never stop the fight for America’s energy independence.