How Harold Hamm helped start the shale revolution and why he didn't join the Trump Cabinet

Oklahoma City oilman Harold Hamm rejected the idea of serving in the Trump administration because he didn’t want to put his assets in a trust, according to a new book by Hamm that details his company's role in transforming energy exploration.

The book focuses primarily on Hamm’s long career in the oil patch and his attempts to sway politicians to back oil and gas production. There is little about his personal life and no details about the bitter divorce case that led him to write a check to his ex-wife for nearly $1 billion in 2014.

Hamm said in an interview that he wanted to tell the story of the nation’s energy renaissance, not “sell all the books in the world,” adding that the book “is not an autobiography at all.”

In the book, “Game Changer: Our 50-Year Mission to Secure America’s Energy Independence,” to be released on Tuesday, Hamm criticizes various government policies and expresses skepticism about how fast renewable energy can replace oil and gas. He also discusses his work to fund diabetes research and his pledge to give away his fortune.

Born in 1945 into a tenant farming family in Lexington, just south of Norman, Hamm started his own oilfield trucking business as a teenager. He then moved on to Champlin Energy in Enid before buying his own drilling equipment and starting what is now Continental Resources.

Hamm is now executive chairman of the company. He stepped aside as CEO in early 2020.

He credits intuition and foresight for decisions that allowed his company to survive the crash of oil prices in the 1980s. He sold his drilling rigs before the failure of Penn Square Bank in Oklahoma City in July 1982, which is often used as a reference point for the years-long collapse of the industry and the state economy. Hamm used the money to buy oil-and-gas properties from distressed companies and then used that revenue to finance his exploration.

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Hamm says he focused on finding very large fields, what he calls “elephants,” first in Oklahoma and then in northern Plains states. Among the first was one near Ames, Oklahoma, at the site of a crater created by a meteor. An early test well there produced two hundred barrels of oil per hour.

His company began experimenting with horizontal drilling in the mid-1990s, and that led to major investments in the Bakken Formation in Montana and North Dakota, where horizontal drilling has produced more than 4 billion barrels of oil.

“If not for Horizontal Drilling, this nation and our daily lives would look much different,” he writes. “Would gasoline be over $10 a gallon? Probably. Would we be looking for oil in all the wrong places? Definitely — all while boosting the bank accounts of some pretty dangerous regimes.”

Hamm devotes several pages to his views on climate science, renewable energy sources and environmental groups.

He says he is not a climate change denier and that his company has worked to reduce methane emissions.

But, he writes, “Many environmentalists criticize others for ‘ignoring the science’ and lecturing us that ‘the science is settled.’ You won’t find anyone more science-driven than me. But when it comes to unproven theories that preach scarcity, hamper growth, and lead to trillions in government mandates and higher consumer prices, you can call me a skeptic.”

He says climate change is “really all about market share and government subsidies.”

"Billions of dollars are being poured into the coffers of the climate groups such as the Sierra Club that rile up voters and convert the unconverted,” he writes. “If environmental nonprofits spent as much time on forestry and water management as they do on scaring the crud out of people, we could make some real progress."

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Cheyenne Skye Branscum, chair of the Oklahoma chapter of the Sierra Club, said, “It’s not impressive that people like Harold Hamm got rich on an industry that exploits our natural resources while the U.S. taxpayer cleans up the mess. Gas failed Oklahoma when we needed it most, locking customers into decades of debt for fuel that was used over a handful of days. Fracking and burning gas harms our land and water, just like coal, and what Oklahoma needs is a faster transition to affordable clean energy and energy storage.”

Branscum was referring to the 2021 winter storm in Oklahoma and Texas, during which utility companies had to purchase natural gas at huge markups on the spot market, resulting in ratepayers being saddled with years of higher bills to retire debt.

In his book, Hamm addresses that storm and the fallout, saying utilities and regulators in the state — in their drive to increase the mix of renewables — had ignored his warnings about the reliability of the grid. He says in the book that natural gas storage was inadequate, a point conceded by utilities in the wake of the storm.

Trump job rejected

Hamm took the company public in 2007 to get the money needed to invest in the Bakken exploration, but he maintained a large majority of the shares and took the company private again last year — a move, he says in the book, that gives the company more freedom to think and act independently.

Hamm says his involvement with public policy dates back to the late 1970s and continues to this day. In a chapter called “Presidential Trumpets,” he says, “My belief was, and still is today, that without oil and gas development, America cannot sustain its global prominence.”

Hamm served as an energy adviser to Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney in 2012, and Donald Trump in 2016.

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After Trump’s victory, Hamm’s name appeared frequently as a potential nominee for energy secretary, a job that eventually went to former Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

In the book, Hamm says he learned he was being considered for a job in the administration and looked into the potential requirements on his business ownership.

“The real stopper for me was the trust provision that would require me to place all my oil and gas holdings, including my Continental stock, in a trust over which I had no control, either now or in the future,” he says. “I thought long and hard about it, but in the end and after conferring with my family, I made the difficult decision not to accept the position.”

Hamm is not supporting Trump’s campaign this year and has donated to two of the former president's GOP rivals: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.

“Although many of his policies were sound and helped our nation prosper, he simply did not stand with many of those who stood with him,” Hamm writes. “My strong belief is there are better qualified candidates who can unite the country in the next election to lead America back to an era of energy abundance.”

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oilman Harold Hamm pens book on oil and gas renaissance and politics