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He is the archetype of the American Dream. The youngest of 13 children, Harold Hamm grew up in rural Oklahoma. At the age of five, he was sent to pick cotton to help his poor family get by. “My back still aches when I think of it,” Hamm recalls. As luck would have it, there was an oil boom happening in the Sooner State. Young Harold caught on and developed a passion for the fossil fuel that powers the world.
In the following 50 years, Hamm has been scouting the earth for hidden treasures, transforming the energy world forever by embracing horizontal drilling_better known as “fracking.”
“Throughout his career, Hamm has been the innovative, bold, tough, and unconventional visionary who, more than any other individual, has charted America’s path toward energy independence and historic prosperity,” writes former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in the foreword of Hamm’s new book “Game Changer”, an Amazon bestseller.
Die Weltwoche sat down with the American pioneer to discuss his life at the core of the shale revolutions and the die-hard opposition of “fracking.”_“There is an abundance of oil,” Hamm explains. “There’s no reason to use untrue, doomsday predictions to frighten the public.”
Weltwoche: Harold Hamm, how did you become a game changer, leading America from energy scarcity to energy independence?
Hamm: It all began in the field and proceeded from there. A lot of the companies that I built and ran were from the service side that serviced the oil field, from trucking to drilling. At one time, we owned 26 drilling rigs with a company called Trend Drilling Company. With that, we were doing contract drilling for a lot of different companies.
We specialized in the art of drilling, if you will. It is an art.
Weltwoche: It’s an art, you say. What makes this art?
Hamm: There were the deep wells in Anadarko Basin (centered in the western part of Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle), high-pressure wells with high-pressure gas. As the value came up on product, particularly natural gas, we started drilling a lot of highly deviated wells beneath cities where we had stranded gas supplies that hadn't been developed due to the social situation underneath cities, particularly.
We drilled several wells underneath Oklahoma City, in Chickasha. We drilled 16 wells underneath the city of Enid and to the Alamo gas field in Texas. Back then, we had, I call it, clunky ways of drilling, side cracking and everything to do these extended-reach wells to get these stranded reserves.
We learned that a lot of these wells, as you cut through these formations at an angle, would produce much more than what you'd get just drilling vertically. Drilling exactly horizontal, we could recover a lot more reserves.
Weltwoche: You were one of the pioneers who did horizontal drilling. How has horizontal drilling become a “game changer” vis-a-vis conventional vertical drilling?
Hamm: If you look at a formation 12 foot thick, drilled vertically, it wouldn't produce economically. Now if you drill horizontally and you stayed in it a mile, suddenly you had that multiplier of 12 feet times that distance. It was an all-time game changer. You had this whole reservoir to work with, and it just opened the door. We called that rock “Generation One Rock.” It is tight rock that wouldn't produce vertically, but it would produce wonderfully when drilled horizontally. Today, we’re actually working with what we call “Generation Three Rock,” which is rock that wouldn't normally produce, even drilled horizontally. Yet, with the proper stimulation technique, we're actually making it produce. That rock contains a lot of clays and other minerals that normally would block permeability. We're able to produce a lot of that rock, and we're getting better at that. That's the future.
Weltwoche: The technique you use is “horizontal drilling.” Commonly, this is known as “fracking,” which derives from “hydraulic fracturing.” You don’t like to use this term. Why is that?
Hamm: The industry certainly didn’t ever use this term. It was put upon the industry by a writer who wrote a book called “Frackers.” It really was out of context and certainly didn't describe what we were doing at all. When you look back over time, one of the first jobs I ever worked at in the oil field was hauling fuel to Western Company and Halliburton, Dalwell, and others that were actually doing well bore stimulation, as we called it. Later on, this was fracturing the rock, through slick water injection into different formations. The first one of those jobs ever done was by Earl P. Halliburton in 1948. It had been a long process of well-bore stimulation.
Weltwoche: There is widespread opposition against fracking. Critics warn about dangers such as micro seismicity (very small earthquakes) or pollution of water, etc. Among the many prominent dissident voices is country music star Willie Nelson, who says, “It’s bad for the land, bad for the farmers, bad for the soil. It’s just all around a bad idea.” What do you say?
Hamm: Some people are just against fossil fuels. They just were against it to start with. A lot of it was about political power, because most oil and gas people they’re business people, conservatives. If you’re in business, you’re writing payroll, you're hiring people. So, normally, you’re pretty conservative in your approach. A lot of people would like to see them gone. All of a sudden, horizontal drilling blew the doors off. All of a sudden, those idealists who thought we were going to be gone forever realized that we’re not. We’re going to be around forever.
Weltwoche: Critics are mostly politically motivated, is that what you are saying?
Hamm: Most of it is. Really, when you come down to it, it’s about power. It’s political power. All of a sudden, they fought back in a lot of different ways. You mentioned the fact that I had an attitude toward people calling us “frackers.” It was more than just that. It was the F-word. They used it against us. There hadn't been any oil and gas books out for a good while. “Frackers” sold a lot of copies. Unfortunately, the author talked really bad about everybody in our industry.
Weltwoche: Your industry truly has bad press. They call people like you “yesterday’s men,” because you're hanging on to the fossil fuels as opposed to green tech that is en vogue and considered to be the future.
Hamm: What we’re seeing play out is that some of these idealists, and we’ll call them idealists, what they stand for is not working. First of all, it’s not financially commercial. A lot of them are biting a bullet. Some of these funds that were set up just to go into these green projects have lost everything. What’s going on with this situation, right now? My God. The biggest losses in automobile history are now being heaped upon Ford, General Motors. Look at Tesla stock. It’s plummeting like a rock.
Weltwoche: Your critics also claim that oil and gas is going to run out soon. However, you seem to prove them wrong.
Hamm: We’ve moved from an era of scarcity within this industry of oil and natural gas to an era of abundance. We’re not your Jimmy Carter era anymore. We’re in an era of abundance with a hundred year’s supply of clean-burning natural gas that’s lowering the emissions in America over 40 percent.
Weltwoche: You say there are resources for at least one hundred years. In other words, all these people who have been warning about the end of fossil fuel are completely wrong?
Hamm: Yes, they’re totally wrong. We have an abundance in natural gas. Natural gas is very cheap on the market, today. Who would’ve thought that? It’s strictly due to supply. There is a tremendous amount of supply and reserves. Natural gas is not going to run out.
Weltwoche: If there is an abundance of resources, as you say, that would mean that your industry is able to help people who now live in energy poverty.
Hamm: Absolutely. It’s a whole new age. We have an era of abundance and energy. Let’s tell the truth about it. Anyway, I’m very excited about some of the things, personally, that we’re doing, “we” being Hamm family. Our foundation has three pillars. Energy advocacy is one of those. That’s what my book “Game Changer” is about. Telling the truth about energy. Another one is education and helping foster education. The third is health. The diabetes foundation. We had a new discovery at the diabetes center, recently, with an alternative to insulin. First time ever.
Weltwoche: You helped your country to become energy independent. Looking at Europe, we see a totally different picture. Many countries are dependent on foreign oil and gas. Now, with this war in Ukraine …
Hamm: … I’m glad you bring that war up because it’s certainly a good example of European dependency.
Weltwoche: Before the Russian invasion into Ukraine, the EU imported 83 percent of its gas. Since then, the main supply from Russia is cut off the grid. And the U.S. temporarily helped Europeans out with liquefied natural gas.
Hamm: We still are.
Weltwoche: What is the future of horizontal drilling in Europe? Could it be a “game changer,” here, too?
Hamm: Oh, absolutely. See, that was the bad thing about all the “fracker” publicity and all of the scare tactics that you mentioned earlier. A lot of people believed it. They banned fracking. It was the absolute wrong thing to do. Look what it did to Europe. There’s a lot of reserves in Europe. In the UK, a lot of natural gas could’ve been developed very safely. With horizontal drilling, the land use has been minimized tremendously. We're drilling 16 to 20 wells from one pad.
Weltwoche: Poland, for example, is investing largely in horizontal drilling. What other European country, what area has the biggest potential?
Hamm: I’m a geologist. I look at a lot of different regions of the world. The Paris Basin, for instance, could have tremendous resources. There’s a lot of reserves. I just came back from the Middle East. In Qatar, so much wealth has been generated from their clean-burning natural gas. They’re able to ship it to a lot of places and help so many people. That’s what I look at as humanitarian. Now, when you look at it right now, we have about 1.3 billion people worldwide that really enjoy the luxury of life with all the fuels and energy that it needs. Look at the other billions. A lot of them don’t have access to what we have. They’re still burning dung and wood and all those things. It’s sad. Those are the people I think about.
Weltwoche: Where are the biggest resources the world?
Hamm: Well, there’s a lot. You go back to all the places that it has been tapped. There I an amount of growth there capacity for additional liquefied natural gas coming off of the Baja area and west coast of Mexico. It’s tremendous. I’m an explorer. I’m a geologist. I like the rock. I am looking out for sedimentary rock that could produce. You go to all these different basins around the world, and you find that there’s still some easy stuff that hadn’t been developed due to the geopolitical risk and things like that. The African continent, for sure, a lot of potential all over.
Weltwoche: Back in the USA, President Joe Biden has reversed what you and President Trump had achieved. He’s been cracking down on the oil and gas industry. How damaging to the US energy situation has the Biden administration been?
Hamm: We’ve seen some of the worst things under Biden’s presidency. The first executive order that he signed was to remove federal lands from exploration. That backfired on him. Immediately, fuel prices went straight up. Everything else went up. Inflation went out of sight. He's still struggling with inflation. It’s hard to get away from it. It’s been a total disaster. He’s got so many disasters around. We haven’t talked about the border.
Weltwoche: I was in Saudi Arabia recently. While Aramco hits record net revenues, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is pushing forward on his “Vision 2030,” based on innovative technologies and green tech such as solar energy. Do you think it might be wise to follow the example of the Saudi oil kingdom and cultivate other forms of energy while still harvesting fossil resources?
Hamm: Yes, I think that using smart technology makes a lot of sense. But practically speaking, you mentioned solar. Where else could you better use solar than in Saudi Arabia? But in many places this is hard to replicate. It’s like water power. Where are you going to build the next dam? Maybe in China, like the Three Gorges Dam. But in America and Europe, you’re not going to build another dam. Environmentalists are not going to see it.
Weltwoche: The next generation of nuclear power plants is getting more advanced. Prominent voices such as Bill Gates say we are absolutely depending on nuclear power. What is your opinion?
Hamm: Sure, nuclear has its own faults and things that happen. We’re all aware of those. It takes so long to put one in. If you’ve got a grid that would handle it, to plug it into a city, it would still take you ten years to permit it and build it. It's not something going to help you today. That's the biggest fault. Even the small modular reactors (SMRs) take ten years, if you had the grid already in place.
Weltwoche: Your life reads like a classic American biography. You were born the thirteenth child of a poor family in rural Oklahoma.
Hamm: I was. They could have stopped at 12. I was the “lucky 13”.
Weltwoche: You were raised by six sisters who were like six extra mothers for you, as you write in your book. What was it in your childhood that shaped the Harold Hamm who sits in front of us today?
Hamm: I never will forget what one of my older nieces said. When I started school and I was worried about whether I could get along with the other kids, she said, “Well, you just have to do one thing.” “What's that?” I asked. “Listen to the teacher and do what she wants to be done, and you'll be just fine,” she said. I really became educationally inspired, and education was my way out of poverty. Education was the one thing more than anything else that shaped me.
Weltwoche: For more than five decades you have been managing highly successful companies. What is your lesson in management you would pass on to the upcoming entrepreneurs?
Hamm: Focus on leadership and business culture. At Continental, we have what we call the “culture of the possible.”
Weltwoche: How do you establish a culture of the possible?
Hamm: Oh, it’s easy. You empower people with that innovative spirit. You hire the smartest, best people you can get to begin with, and then you empower them. Then you have a culture that if something goes wrong, don’t blame them. Pat them on the back and say, “Go get it, boy. You’re on the right track here. You’re thinking ahead.” Leadership is everything. It's not something you’re born with. I wasn't a born leader. I learned it.
Urs Gehriger