Rank #137
Harold Hamm & family
Net worth $20.1B
Oil & gas · United States
- Born
- Dec 11, 1945
- Age
- 80
- Source
- Oil & gas
- Residence
- Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
- Citizenship
- United States
- Marital status
- Divorced
- Children
- 5
- Education
- Diploma, High School
Net worth over time
Biography
- Fracking pioneer Harold Hamm founded and chairs Continental Resources, one of the nation's biggest independent oil companies.
- The 13th child of Oklahoma sharecroppers, Hamm's earliest memory is picking tomatoes while barefoot in the red Oklahoma dirt.
- He eventually started his own trucking company hauling water to and from oilfields, then in 1971 took out a loan to drill his first well.
- In the 1990s he had the vision to use horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing in North Dakota's Bakken region, transforming the U.S. oil industry.
- Hamm's new oil exploration venture is in Turkey, in partnership with Malone Mitchell at TransAtlantic Petroleum.
- When Hamm divorced his wife of 26 years in late 2014, he wrote her a settlement check for nearly $975 million.
- Hamm took Continental private in a 2022 LBO and divvied up ownership among his children.