Low Oil Prices Force Billionaire Harold Hamm to Halt Bakken Drilling
If anyone is still wondering whether the Trump Administration's goal of $50 per barrel oil price would hurt American drillers, the answer came this week from oil tycoon and wildcatter Harold Hamm, who is ceasing drilling operations in North Dakota for the first time in decades.
"This will be the first time in over 30 years that Harold Hamm has not had an operation with drilling rigs in North Dakota," Hamm, who founded Continental Resources, told Bloomberg in a telephone interview published on Friday.
"There's no need to drill it when margins are basically gone," the billionaire oil magnate and Trump donor said.
But the breakevens in the shale plays are close to $60 per barrel WTI price. In recent months, the U.S. benchmark price has rarely topped $60 a barrel for a sustained period.
In the Bakken, the breakeven for drilling a well is now on average at least $58 per barrel, up by 4% from a year ago, as costs have increased, a BloombergNEF report has found.
President Donald Trump's major campaign pledge of cheap oil at about $50 per barrel would reduce drilling activity in all the major basins, including the most resilient play, the Permian, analysts say.
Hamm told Bloomberg that "A lot of people are assessing their activity in all the basins."
Lower 48 oil production will stall in 2026 for the first time since the pandemic, Wood Mackenzie said last month in its preview of what to expect in the U.S. onshore basins.
In the December Dallas Energy Survey, which encompasses mostly the Permian, one executive at an exploration and production company said that "Decreasing oil prices are making many of our firm's wells noneconomic."
OilPrice.com
Low Oil Prices Force Billionaire Harold Hamm to Halt Bakk...
Billionaire oil magnate Harold Hamm has ceased drilling operations in North Dakota’s Bakken shale, citing low margins as oil prices remain near the $50 per barrel range and costs increase.
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