The
last time we profiled Harold Hamm, the billionaire founder of Continental Resources, it was early 2009 and oil prices had slumped to $40 a barrel. This was bad news for Hammʼs big push into the Bakken oil play of North Dakota and Montana, where tight rocks and tricky drilling necessitate $50 crude to break even. With oil back at $100, Hamm is sitting pretty with the biggest holding in the Bakken and set to invest $1 billion there this year in his quest to prove that it is not just one of the biggest oil fields in the United States, but in the whole world. “Out of all the oil plays in the U.S., thereʼs just one Bakken,” Hamm says. “It towers above everything else.”
