Happening Today: Visit with Harold Hamm

HAPPENING TODAY

Visit with Harold Hamm

3:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.

Collaborative Energy Complex (CEC) Hamilton Atrium

Today, Feb. 25, at 3:00 p.m. in the CEC Hamilton Atrium, we will be joined by Harold Hamm who will visit and speak with students. During his visit, Hamm will talk energy, business and advice to students. All CEM students are invited to attend this event. Students in Geology, Geological Engineering, and Petroleum Engineering are strongly encouraged to participate this event.

About Harold Hamm

It was a class in high school that sparked Harold Hamm’s long and prolific career in the oil and gas industry.

The youngest among 13 siblings born in rural southern Oklahoma, the founder and current executive chairman of Continental Resources attended school in Enid in the northern portion of the state.

Perhaps it’s no surprise that it was in Enid where young Hamm nurtured a fascination for the energy sector and the leaders who ran it. After the discovery of oil in the region in the early 20th century, Enid, also famed for its wheat production, boomed. Oilmen “lived big,” said Hamm, but they were also generous with their money and time, investing in the development of the city.

For a distributive education class – a vocational-type course that pairs students and professionals in different trades – Hamm studied the oil executives and entrepreneurs. The more he learned about them, the more he wanted to venture into the oil economy.

“I did an oral report and the more research I did, the more I found about the generosity that went through all the people in oil and gas and all the things that they’ve done for Oklahoma,” Hamm said. “So I was taken by that. I thought, ‘Wow, I want to be a part of that.’”

Hamm set his mind on a career as a petroleum geologist. After high school, he worked in the oil patch to save up for college. There were no grants or scholarships back then, Hamm said.

In the late 1960s, at the age of 21, Hamm founded what would grow into Continental Resources, a Top 10 oil producer in the lower 48 states and a leader in the Bakken in western North Dakota.

Over the years as the company flourished, Hamm heeded the examples set by the oil-industry leaders before him, the ones whose benevolence had impressed him in his teenage years.

According to his biography on Continental Resources’ website, Hamm has donated more than $65 million to combat diabetes. In 2012, he supplied $10 million to establish the Hamm School of Geology and Geological Engineering at the University of North Dakota, in addition to funding various scholarships and awards for education and research.