The following is a condensed and edited interview with Harold Hamm, CEO, Continental Resources.
Domestic crude supplies have almost doubled. Do you feel Americans appreciate what your industry has done?It’s hard to miss the benefits of what’s happened as a result of the oil and gas renaissance. A lot of people didn’t expect it—particularly those environmentalists that would stop all fossil fuel production.The industry has been forced to reckon with efficiencies in the face of lower prices. How much more efficient are Continental and its competitors today?When horizontal drilling began in the 1980s, one well would take the place of 18. So one surface location would take the place of 18 locations on the surface—a tremendously more efficient situation.What has given us this energy renaissance in America is the horizontal drilling techniques that the small independent operators like my company developed.Do you think that your industry is going to come out of this price cycle stronger in any way?As far as processes, yes. As far as financial, no. I mean, it’s hurt our industry greatly. But … it made OPEC irrelevant. They’re no longer going to be able to control America and the consumer prices here. You know, that’s probably the biggest patriotic gain that we’ll ever see in our lifetime. For 50 years, they’ve controlled consumer prices at the pump in this country—50 years.Dealing with a diminished OPEC, you think, is a good thing for the U.S.?Absolutely. I mean, what are you paying for gasoline out there today? Two dollars?I paid two bucks last week.There you go, man. They had it at $4 or $5. So it’s a huge thing. We can’t even measure that. Has it helped our economy? Absolutely. You know, the last eight years were pretty miserable, but they would have been real bad without what we’ve done—without this energy renaissance. It’s been tremendous.
As it relates to energy policy, what do you want to see from the next president?Well, somebody’s going to have to change the rhetoric on the fossil fuel industry and not have a target on everybody’s back in this industry and trying to put us out of business.Do you see Hillary Clinton as Obama 2.0? What does she mean for the oil and gas industry?Well, just listen to what she said, that she’s going to stop pressure treatment of wells. That pretty much would put an end to everything [for shale development]. And for what? I mean, it’s been proven, you know, there hasn’t been any [environmental] damage from that.For the Republican Party, what happened during the past four years that fed the rise of Mr. Trump?It’s not just in the Republican Party; I think it’s basically across the country. Call it the Washington disconnect. While working there to lift the crude-oil export ban, I got a real feeling that there was a huge disconnect between the everyday American worker, the average American, and Washington. There wasn’t any attention being paid to it. And I think that’s played out with this entire process. The people that weren’t insiders necessarily have fared very well. And yes, Donald Trump is not a politician.
Is that good or bad?I think it’s good. He basically has his thumb on exactly what concerns the American people. It’s like immigration: We ought to know who comes here, you know, like any other country. That’s what Brexit was about. They were being overrun by people who basically were there to kill the masses.You think that’s a similar situation here?Certainly. Orlando’s an awful good example. Will it get worse? Yes. It’ll get worse unless we get a handle on it real quick.There’s a line in the GOP platform that refers to: “Some of the hundreds of millions of dollars that we pay for foreign oil ends up in the hands of terrorists.” With the amount of reductions that we’ve seen in, say, OPEC oil coming into the United States, Canada is now our biggest supplier. Is that point—that by buying foreign oil, we’re giving money to potential terrorists—is that still applicable?Well, absolutely. I mean, when you look at what’s going on, you know, we don’t have terrorism come from Canada. Let’s look at where it’s coming from. The Middle East, right? Islamic terrorism. I mean, that’s what it is, 100 percent. And is it being funded? Yes. I mean, we’ve got 50 percent of, as I said, the population being under 20 over there, nothing to do. They’d about as soon go fight jihad somewhere as lay around and do nothing, right? And particularly, particularly, if their families are being enriched. And with all of the oil that was smuggled out of Iran during the sanctions, with all the oil —I mean, gosh, you can just watch them all up in Iraq, not to mention the fact that now all of the oil in Libya is controlled by ISIS, 100 percent.There was a Bloomberg breakfast entitled “The Future of Climate Change Conversation in the Republican Party.” Where do you think the conversation is among Mr. Trump and his advisers—and people like you—about climate?I think we have some basic rule-of-law issues that’s going on today that have to be addressed. This immigration problem has to be addressed. It’s dire. We have to get a handle on people coming into this country we don’t know anything about that’s going to be killing masses, OK? That’s what they’re doing. I mean, they’re soft targets. And we have folks that—they’re not like we are; they’re not living for life today. They’re living for the afterlife. And they enjoy—they’re going to paradise if they kill enough folks. And I think that we need to be aware of the environment around us, absolutely. But emissions are down, CO2 emissions are down over 20 percent, the lowest level they’ve been since the ’90s, early ’90s. So progress—huge progress—has been made, you know, so continue that conversation in the future, after you get some of these basic things done. SoundCloud: Bloomberg Businessweek Interview Issue: Harold Hamm by Bloomberg
To contact the author of this story: Matthew Philips in Washington at mphilips3@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Ellis at jellis27@bloomberg.net.
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