From working in cotton fields at age 16 to being one of the richest oil magnates in the world: who is Harold Hamm

From working in cotton fields at age 16 to being one of the richest oil magnates in the world: who is Harold Hamm

October 30, 2024 – 18:15

The American became one of the wealthiest people in his country due to his wealth of billions of dollars.

Harold Hamm is considered the “King of Fraking” for the thousands of million of dollars he got with his oil company Continental Resources. His company is recognized for generating up to 200,000 barrels a day, but also for the controversies generated by its way of extraction. The American carries out hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, which causes serious damage to the environment.

The method used to obtain fossil fuel involves the injection of water and chemicals at high pressure through piped channels more than 2,500 meters deep to overcome the resistance of the soil and open a fracture to access oil or gas deposits. . This technique reduces extraction costs, but climate activists point out that fraking uses high water consumptionwhile contaminating the atmosphere, aquifers, the surface and cause health problems in workers.

Harold Hamm’s early life

The billionaire was born in 1945 into a humble family and He was the youngest of 13 children that their parents had. They lived in a one-room house and worked mainly in the cotton harvest, a job that Hamm began doing at the age of 16 to be able to add income to his household.

The American moved to the city of Enid, Oklahoma, to look for a more prosperous future with the arrival of an oil company. This sector had boomed and Hamm managed to enter as a gasoline dispatcher and tire repairman. In this town he was also able to complete his secondary studies and in his training where he found his dream of being an oilman and searching for new fields to exploit.

Harold Hamm: From Farm to Absolute Riches

At 21 years old he managed to open his first company after finishing high school. It offered logistics services under the name Harold Hamm Tank Trucks. The American renamed his company to honor his two daughters and called Shelly Dean Oil Company. Soon He found his first deposit, where he inaugurated an oil well, which produced 20 barrels per hour at 25 years old.

He found his second extraction point just over 8 kilometers from his first well. This new site provided 75 barrels of oil per hour. In 1990 it changed its name to its current name. Continental Resources and offered its services to the Bakken oil field, in Montana and North Dakota.

Later, in the 2000s, it was the first company to use hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling in North Dakota. In addition, his company was listed on the stock market for the first time and Hamm would sell part of his shares for $300 million.

Heritage of Harold Hamm and his family, according to Forbes

Harold Hamm 2.jpg

CNBC

The North American knew how to recover from the historic drop in the price of oil in 2014 and the crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic a few years ago. Despite all this, Harold Hamm managed to obtain an estate of 14.5 billion dollars according to Forbes magazine.

Source: Ambito

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