Wildcatter Finds $10 Billion Drilling in North Dakota: Energy
Harold G. Hamm is lost.
The 66-year-old founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Continental Resources Inc. (CLR) is steering a Chevy Tahoe past sunflower fields and grazing cows in western North Dakota. He’s found millions of barrels of oil in these low prairie hills, but on this bright fall day, he’s having trouble locating one of his own drilling rigs, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its Jan. 23 issue.
In the back seat, Hamm’s public-relations handler uses her smartphone to get their bearings. “So, we go three miles east, five north,” Hamm says in his Oklahoma drawl. “Got it.”
Meandering past an idle John Deere combine and clutches of mobile homes where oil workers live, he points out wells his company has already drilled as if showing a guest around his home. He misses a turn, shrugs, stops, doubles back. “It’s a great day in North Dakota,” he says. “We’ll find it.”
Finally, he pulls into a dusty yard surrounding a 140-foot- tall rig. Workers hustle around in hard hats and black fire- retardant coveralls. From this single location, Hamm explains, four drills will corkscrew down nearly two miles, then turn and pierce the rock horizontally, two wells to the north, two to the south. He pulls on his own hard hat and coveralls, jams his hands in his pockets, and beams at the rig.
“Without a doubt, this is going to be like the one up the road,” he shouts over the whine of a drill bit. “It came in close to 2,000 barrels a day.” That translates into about $150,000 in revenue per day to Continental Resources.
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