Harold Hamm, the wealthiest American energy mogul, earned $3 billion on Wednesday morning, when the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) announced an oil production cut that would cap the bloc’s output at 32.5 million barrels per day.
Hamm’s shares of Continental Resources Inc. rose 22 percent in value to $10.58 a piece during early morning trading hours in the New York Stock Exchange.
The $13.8-billionare, who currently serves as an energy advisor to President-elect Donald Trump, is on the shortlist to be U.S. Energy Secretary, according to a document procured by the Associated Press.
Like Trump, Harold Hamm has shown himself to be a skeptic about current fracking regulations. Ahead of the U.S. elections he stated: “There's so many of these overreaching regulations that have gone on. My goodness. We called it death by a thousand cuts, and that's exactly what it was intended to do”.
For the oil and gas industry, the Trump presidency will likely be beneficial, as Trump seems positive towards natural gas production and consumption and has, ever since he got nominated, stressed the importance of U.S. energy independence.
Crude oil prices had been volatile since the end of September, when OPEC said it would agree on the terms of a freeze by its November 30th meeting, but conflicting political and economic agendas between the cartel’s members led speculation regarding the deal’s feasibility to run amok.
“This should be a wake-up call for skeptics who have argued the death of OPEC,” Amrita Sen, an oil analyst at Energy Aspects Ltd told Bloomberg. “The group wants to push inventories down.”
Despite the deal-driven boost, barrel prices remain less than half their 2014 highs, which topped $100 a piece.
At the time of this article’s writing, Brent had risen 9.15 percent to $51.65 and West Texas Intermediate had jumped 8.82 percent to $49.22, since trading opened Wednesday morning.
Continental Resources (NYSE: CLR) is a top 10 independent oil producer in the U.S. Lower 48 based in Oklahoma City. It is the largest leaseholder and one of the largest producers in the Bakken, and has SCOOP and STACK plays in Oklahoma.
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By Zainab Calcuttawala for Oilprice.com
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