How Harold Hamm pushed Trump to go all in

Trump’s return to the White House has yielded very positive results for Continental, which said it expects to benefit from expanded tax cuts. The company also recently received long-sought permits from the Trump administration to drill for oil and gas in Wyoming.

At the same time, the Trump administration and Congress have moved to roll back or weaken policies that threaten oil and gas, including fuel efficiency standards, methane emissions regulations and tax credits for electric vehicles and renewable energy. Such returns have helped offset the industry’s disappointment with low oil prices and higher tariffs that have sapped profits this year.

Hamm and Continental declined interview requests and did not respond to written requests for comment. In a written statement, the White House spokesman said that Hamm was among the oil industry executives who advised Trump.

“The President frequently listens to the advice and concerns of many senior stakeholders and business leaders to ensure America’s oil and gas industry has adequate resources and capabilities to ‘DRILL, BABY, DRILL’ and serve the American people,” he said.

The Hamm-Trump partnership was born in 2012, when Trump, who was already looking to enter the presidential race, invited Hamm to visit him at Trump Tower in New York.

These two men, so different on paper, had much in common.

Both were dissidents. Both used symbols of American patriotism to promote their own interests. The oilman promised his support if Trump runs for president.

“I think he had a lot of confidence in what I told him,” Hamm said. Washington Post Reporter in 2016.

That year, Hamm was among the first oil and gas executives to support Trump, saying at the Republican convention that “President Trump will ignite America’s future and be the first president to achieve America’s energy independence.”

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Born a few months after the end of World War II, Hamm moved around as a young boy before settling in Enid, Oklahoma. He founded a one-truck oilfield services company in his early 20s and eventually began drilling his own oil wells, making Continental a major player in the West.

In March 2004, a breakthrough occurred at the edge of an oil and gas field known as the Bakken in North Dakota. Hamm had a hunch that if he applied new drilling techniques, now known as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, he could extract oil where others had failed. He was right.

Continental’s success helped increase North Dakota’s oil production and launched the fracking boom that would make the United States the world’s top producer of oil and natural gas. Hamm took the company public in 2007, by which point he was a wealthy man with growing influence in Oklahoma City, where Continental is headquartered.

After Trump took office in 2017, Hamm did not hesitate to lean on the administration and Republicans in Congress.

During a June 2018 visit to Washington, the oilman used his influence to weaken automotive fuel efficiency standards.

Hamm told House lawmakers that the rules were “archaic and burdensome.”

The Trump administration soon rolled back US fuel efficiency rules.

This was just the beginning. Hamm’s lobby group, the Domestic Energy Producers Alliance, has worked to weaken protections for threatened species such as sage grouse. He also lobbied the Trump administration to cut regulations aimed at reducing air pollution near oil drilling sites.

Both air pollution and wildlife protection measures have been reduced.

But soon Hamm found himself out in the cold.

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, demand for oil decreased and prices crashed. Continental’s market value fell to less than $4 billion from about $22 billion 18 months ago, wiping out much of Hamm’s fortune. At the time, he held about 80 percent of the company’s shares.

Meanwhile, concerns about climate change were also increasing. Partly under pressure from environmentalists and some policymakers, major investors began to pressure public companies to restrict fossil fuel use and production.

After Joe Biden took office in 2021, Congress encouraged electric vehicle purchases, invested billions of dollars in charging stations and subsidized battery production.

By this time, many major oil companies had begun to turn to cleaner energy.

Hamm took the opposite route and protected Continental from investor pressure by privatizing the company in 2022.

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By April 2024, Hamm was rallying support for Trump. He helped organize several oil and gas executives to have dinner with Trump, including Wright, who was then CEO of fracking company Liberty Energy.

At that dinner, Trump had pressured the group to raise US$1 billion for his campaign in exchange for promises to eliminate a number of regulations. (After all, oil and gas interests contributed nearly $75 million to Trump’s reelection effort.)

“This is a dream team of unimaginable proportions,” Hamm said after Trump appointed Wright as energy secretary and Burgum as interior secretary.

A mechanical hum mixed with the clanking of steel echoed through central Wyoming on a recent evening. This area, where mule deer and pronghorn antelope outnumber humans, is where Continental and others hope to drill up to 5,000 wells.

There is perhaps no better demonstration of what Hamm has accomplished since Trump returned to office.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs first approved the project in late 2020.

But after local groups sued, a federal judge blocked the new permits, saying the government had failed to adequately consider how drilling would affect the environment. (The federal government owns many underground oil and gas reserves and therefore controls permits, even though most of the land is privately owned.)

This was more than a disappointment for Hamm: Continental’s heartland, the Bakken in North Dakota, was in decline, and the company needed new targets.

With Trump back in power, Continental and others moved quickly to overcome the roadblocks. They submitted a report from a consultant they had hired that concluded oil drilling would not impact groundwater.

On a second front, Continental and its allies had demanded that the Interior Department make more federal land available for lease in Wyoming and elsewhere and step up related environmental reviews.

Hamm, of course, had a close supporter in Burgum, who as interior minister oversaw oil and gas leasing.

Last northern spring, the obstacles to Hamm’s ambitions suddenly fell away. In April, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management actually approved the industry’s groundwater report.

That same month, Burgum announced his agency was reducing the sometimes multi-year review of permits on federal lands across the country to as little as 28 days.

‘We are at a very good point in the USA. ‘We are in the age of abundance.’

Harold Hamm

The department said it did no special favors for Hamm. “Efforts to improve permit efficiency are long-standing and based on agency policy, not any individual or company,” agency spokeswoman Alyse Sharpe said in a statement. He also said agency experts “independently reviewed” industry-funded groundwater data.

Continental’s benefits were clear. In August, the Interior Department began issuing dozens of new permits to Hamm’s company to drill in Converse County, Wyoming.

Continental’s production in Wyoming hit a record high late this year. This crackdown brought mixed reviews from longtime residents of the area.

“The problem is, while there is oil, no one in my lifetime has ever decided to leave it in the ground,” said Maria Katherman, who grew up on a nearby farm and is now part of a group suing to block the new project.

These drilling permits are just the beginning.

The Biden-era special fee on methane emissions, which penalizes companies that emit large amounts of pollutants, has been suspended, saving oil companies like Continental hundreds of millions of dollars over the next decade.

Other items high on Hamm’s wish list include buyback policies that force vehicle manufacturers to produce more electric and hybrid vehicles; and increasing tax breaks for oil companies that pump carbon dioxide underground to extend the life of aging oil fields, as in North Dakota. Trump also helped increase natural gas exports.

Continental still faces some significant hurdles, including Trump-era tariffs that have driven up drilling equipment prices. But Hamm is happy with his friend in the White House.

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“We’re in a very good spot in the United States,” Hamm told oil executives this year. “We are in the age of abundance”

This article was first published on: New York Times

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