The Oilman Who Pushed Trump to Go All In on Fossil Fuels
Harold Hamm, an Oklahoma oil tycoon, has played a central role in reshaping energy policy by allying himself with President Trump.
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By Eric Lipton and Rebecca F. Elliott
Eric Lipton reported from Douglas, Wyo., Houston and Oklahoma City, and Rebecca Elliott from Houston and Washington.
Dec. 12, 2025
The executives dining at the White House to celebrate President Trump’s $300 million ballroom — and their role in financing it — were a who’s who of American industry. Many hailed from companies that are household names, like Microsoft, OpenAI and Comcast.
Seated among them was Harold G. Hamm, the 13th child of Oklahoma sharecroppers and founder of an oil company, Continental Resources, that is little known outside of energy circles.
Mr. Hamm is a wildcatter, an oil prospector who drills wells in unproven areas, taking big bets that can turn into black gold or financial ruin.
Not long ago, it seemed as if Mr. Hamm and his allies in the oil industry were losing. They were deeply out of favor in Washington — and on Wall Street — shunned for contributing to climate change and failing to deliver the returns investors wanted.
But with Mr. Trump back in power, Mr. Hamm is, too.
The alliance between the two — a soft-spoken oilman with no college degree and a onetime New York real estate developer — is now playing a big role in American energy. Together, they have remade federal policy to benefit oil and gas companies, including Mr. Hamm’s Continental, and put off the transition to greener alternatives like solar power and batteries.
Mr. Hamm was among Mr. Trump’s earliest oil industry backers, and that loyalty — paired with more than $2 million in campaign contributions — has earned him outsize influence.
Harold Hamm, center, at an October fund-raising dinner for President Trump’s ballroom at the White House in Washington.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
Mr. Hamm, who turned 80 this month and recently adopted the title of chairman emeritus as he stepped back at Continental, has used that influence to position loyalists for top administration jobs.
They include Chris Wright, a longtime fossil fuel executive and a former director of an oil-industry lobbying group that Mr. Hamm co-founded. Mr. Wright is now Mr. Trump’s energy secretary. The Interior secretary job went to Doug Burgum, a former North Dakota governor and close ally of Mr. Hamm’s whose family has leased land to Continental for drilling.
Mr. Trump’s return to the White House is paying off handsomely for Continental, which has said it expects to benefit from expanded tax breaks. The company also recently secured long-sought permits from the Trump administration to drill for oil and natural gas in Wyoming.
At the same time, the Trump administration and Congress have moved to undo or weaken policies that threatened oil and gas, including fuel-efficiency standards, methane emissions regulations, and tax credits for electric vehicles and renewable power. Such rollbacks have helped offset the industry’s frustration with low oil prices and higher tariffs, which have squeezed profits this year.
Mr. Hamm and Continental declined interview requests and did not respond to written requests for comment. A White House spokeswoman said in a written statement that Mr. Hamm was among the oil industry executives who offered Mr. Trump advice.
“The president frequently listens to the recommendations and concerns of many top stakeholders and business leaders to ensure America’s oil and gas industry has the adequate resources and capabilities to ‘DRILL, BABY, DRILL’ and deliver for the American people,” she said.
This comprehensive rollback by Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans of Biden-era climate regulations will cause an estimated 7.6 billion tons of additional greenhouse gas emissions to be released in the coming decade, according to an analysis for The New York Times by the Princeton University-led REPEAT Project. That is about what 150 million gas-powered cars on the road would emit in that same time.
Rising energy demand from data centers and overseas gas buyers are also major factors in extending the life of fossil fuels.
Other oil and gas executives share many of Mr. Hamm’s priorities. But unlike those who have invested in renewables to some degree, Mr. Hamm is a proud oil and gas fundamentalist. Now, his black-and-white view of energy — which puts fossil fuels at the center of the American story — has become mainstream again.
“We’ve just gotten started,” Mr. Hamm said at a recent energy conference hosted by a conservative think tank. “It’s a changed world.”
Humble Beginnings
Mr. Hamm and Mr. Trump in Bismarck, N.D., in 2016. Mr. Hamm was among the first oil and gas executives to endorse Mr. Trump for president.Credit...Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
The Hamm-Trump partnership was birthed in 2012, when the two men met at an election watch party for the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, whom Mr. Hamm was advising.
Mr. Trump, already flirting with a presidential run, invited Mr. Hamm to visit him at Trump Tower in New York.
The two men, so different on paper, had much in common.
Both were contrarians. Both used symbols of American patriotism to boost their own pursuits. And they seemed to genuinely like each other. The oilman pledged his support should Mr. Trump run for president, he recalled in his memoir.
“I think he has a great deal of confidence in what I tell him,” Mr. Hamm told a Washington Post reporter in 2016.
That year, Mr. Hamm was among the first oil and gas executives to endorse Mr. Trump, declaring at the Republican convention that “President Trump will fuel America’s future and become the first president to achieve American energy independence.”
Born a few months after the end of World War II, Mr. Hamm moved around as a young boy before settling in Enid, Okla., and taking a job pumping gas and fixing flats. In his early 20s, he started a one-truck oil field services company and eventually began drilling his own oil wells, building Continental into a major player in the West.
It made him successful, but a breakthrough came in March 2004, on the edge of an oil and gas deposit known as the Bakken in North Dakota. Mr. Hamm had a hunch that if he applied new drilling techniques — now known as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing — he could squeeze oil out of the ground where others had failed. He was right.
Continental’s success helped propel North Dakota’s oil output, ushering in the fracking boom that would transform the United States into the world’s top producer of oil and natural gas. Mr. Hamm took the company public in 2007, by which point he was a wealthy man with growing influence in Oklahoma City, where Continental is based.
Mr. Hamm’s 2004 breakthrough in North Dakota, the Bakken, put him on a path toward wealth and influence in Oklahoma City.Credit...Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post, via Getty Images
Mr. Hamm and his second wife, Sue Ann Arnall, at a Time 100 Gala in 2012.Credit...Kevin Mazur/WireImage for Time, via Getty Images
Mr. Hamm and Ms. Arnall funded the diabetes research center at the University of Oklahoma.Credit...Nick Oxford for The New York Times
A bronze hard hat in Mr. Hamm’s office at Continental Resources in 2023.Credit...Nick Oxford/Bloomberg
He and his second wife, Sue Ann Arnall, became major charitable donors, giving to causes including a diabetes research center in Oklahoma named after Mr. Hamm. (Their divorce made headlines in 2015 for the size of the settlement check he wrote her: $975 million.)
Mr. Hamm’s first big taste of national politics came during the Obama administration, when his lobbying group helped push officials in Washington to lift a decades-old ban on exporting crude oil from the United States. The law, enacted during the 1970s oil crisis, in effect capped domestic production and depressed prices.
“Whether blueberries or barrels of oil, restrictions hamper growth in the market,” Mr. Hamm told a Senate committee in 2014.
Congress ended the ban in late 2015. Mr. Hamm was learning that just a small chunk of his wealth was needed to wield enough power to reshape federal policy.
Promoting Fossil Fuels and Undermining Alternatives
Mr. Trump in 2017 announced his administration’s plan to roll back regulations on energy production and development.Credit...Pool photo by Kevin Dietsch
After Mr. Trump took office in 2017, Mr. Hamm was not shy about leaning on the administration and Republicans in Congress.
On one visit to Washington, in June 2018, the oilman used his clout to push for weakening automotive fuel-efficiency standards. These rules require cars to travel farther on each gallon of gas, lowering demand for oil.
Mr. Hamm told House lawmakers that the rules were “archaic and onerous” adding, in his prepared remarks, that the standards were born in an era “of oil and gas scarcity mentality and have since become inapplicable and obsolete.”
The Trump administration soon rolled back the U.S. fuel efficiency rules.
Mr. Trump joined Mr. Hamm in Pittsburgh for an energy rally in 2019.Credit...Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times
That was just the start. Mr. Hamm’s lobbying group, the Domestic Energy Producers Alliance, worked to weaken protections for threatened species such as sage grouse, a chicken-size bird famed for its elaborate spring mating dance.
It also lobbied the Trump administration to cut regulations intended to curb air pollution near oil drilling sites. The Interior Department “does not have jurisdiction” to impose such restrictions, the group wrote.
Both the air pollution and wildlife protection measures were curtailed.
Out of Favor
Mr. Hamm shielded Continental from investor pressure by taking the company private in 2022.Credit...Nick Oxford for The New York Times
Before long, however, Mr. Hamm found himself in the cold.
In the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, oil demand shriveled and prices plunged, throwing the American oil industry into disarray. Continental’s market valuation dropped below $4 billion, from around $22 billion 18 months earlier, wiping out a large chunk of Mr. Hamm’s wealth. He held around 80 percent of the company’s stock at the time.
In the meantime, concerns about climate change were growing. Partly under pressure from environmentalists and some policymakers, big investors began to squeeze public corporations to curb fossil fuel use and production.
After Joseph R. Biden Jr. took office in 2021, Congress encouraged electric vehicle purchases, invested billions of dollars into charging stations and subsidized battery manufacturing.
By this time, many larger oil companies had begun committing themselves to cleaner energy. BP went so far as to pledge to become a “net-zero company by 2050 or sooner,” meaning its operations would stop contributing to climate change by that year.
Mr. Hamm took the opposite tack, shielding Continental from investor pressure by taking the company private in 2022.
The next year, he and his allies met in San Antonio, near the Alamo, where hundreds of people were killed nearly two centuries ago as they fought to split Texas from Mexico.
“Our brave people are choosing to fight,” was the message, according to a newsletter published by Mr. Hamm’s lobbying group. But “unlike the men of the Alamo, we are not in a position of no hope.”
By April 2024, Mr. Hamm was marshaling support for Mr. Trump. He helped organize many oil and gas executives to dine with Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago that spring, including Chris Wright, then the chief executive of the fracking company Liberty Energy.
There, Mr. Trump wondered aloud if Mr. Wright might become his next energy secretary — even though it was months before the election, Mr. Hamm has said.
Mr. Trump also pressed the group at that dinner to raise $1 billion for his campaign, in return for his promise to do away with a laundry list of regulations. (In the end, oil and gas interests gave around $75 million to Mr. Trump’s re-election effort.)
“It is a dream team of unimaginable proportions,” Mr. Hamm said after Mr. Trump tapped Mr. Wright as energy secretary and another ally, Mr. Burgum, as Interior secretary.
Doug Burgum, left, and Chris Wright, both close with Mr. Hamm, were named to cabinet positions in the current Trump administration.Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times
The day Mr. Trump was inaugurated to his second term, Mr. Hamm hosted a party on the rooftop of the Hay Adams, a hotel near the White House. Hundreds of oil executives and government officials attended the celebration, which had mementos like pop tarts decorated with Mr. Trump’s smiling face.
After Mr. Trump was sworn in, Mr. Hamm raised a champagne glass and posed for photographs. Over his blue suit, he wore a red T-shirt printed with white lettering: “WELCOME BACK.”
New Prospects
A mechanical humming, mixed with the clanking of steel, echoed one recent evening in central Wyoming. This site, where mule deer and Pronghorn antelope outnumber humans, is where Continental and others hope to drill up to 5,000 wells.
Perhaps no place better demonstrates what Mr. Hamm has accomplished since Mr. Trump returned to office.
The Interior Department first approved the project in late 2020.
But after local groups sued, a federal judge blocked any new permits, saying the government had failed to adequately evaluate how drilling would affect the environment, including ground water used by cattle ranchers. (The federal government owns many underground oil and gas deposits and therefore controls permitting, even though private individuals often own the land.)
This was more than just a frustration for Mr. Hamm: The Bakken in North Dakota, Continental’s lifeblood, was in decline, and the company needed new targets.
“That’s the best possibility we have,” Mr. Hamm said this year during an event in Fort Worth, Texas, referring to Continental’s Wyoming holdings.
With Mr. Trump back in power, Continental and others quickly moved to get around the roadblocks. They had submitted a report from a consultant they hired that concluded that oil drilling would not affect groundwater.
On a second front, Continental and its allies had asked the Interior Department to open up more federal land for lease in Wyoming and elsewhere and accelerate related environmental reviews.
Mr. Hamm, of course, had a close supporter in Mr. Burgum, the former North Dakota governor, who as Interior secretary oversees oil and gas leasing.
This past spring, barriers to Mr. Hamm’s ambitions suddenly lifted. In April, the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management in effect endorsed the industry’s groundwater report.
That same month, at an event hosted by Mr. Hamm in Oklahoma, Mr. Burgum announced his agency was slashing what had sometimes been a multiyear review of permits on federal lands nationwide to no more than 28 days.
The Interior said it did no special favors for Mr. Hamm. “Efforts to improve permitting efficiency are longstanding and based on agency policy — not on any individual or company,” Alyse Sharpe, an agency spokeswoman, said in a statement. She also said agency specialists had “independently reviewed” the industry-funded groundwater data.
The benefits for Continental were clear. In August, the Interior began to issue Mr. Hamm’s company dozens of new permits to drill in Wyoming’s Converse County.
“The reason he’s buddies with Trump is because like everything else Harold ever decided, he saw an advantage,” said Mickey Thompson, a former Oklahoma oil-industry lobbyist who was once close with Mr. Hamm. He added: “How’s that working for him? Pretty damn well.”
Continental’s production in Wyoming hit a record as of late this year. The push has brought mixed reviews from longtime residents.
“The problem is, when there is oil, no one in my lifetime has decided to just leave it in the ground,” said Maria Katherman, who grew up on a nearby ranch and is now part of a group suing to block the new project.
   
Maria Katherman, top right, who grew up on a ranch near Wyoming’s Converse County, is now part of a group suing to block Continental's new project.Credit...Photographs by Loren Elliott for The New York Times
On a drive through the area, including one spot where Continental has set up a retention pond for waste water, Ms. Katherman said an endless caravan of oil-service tractor-trailer trucks are plying small rural roads. Nearby, more than 150 workers are building a new 55-mile oil pipeline across ranchers’ land.
These permits to drill are just the start.
A special Biden-era fee on methane emissions — which penalizes companies that emit large amounts of the pollutant — has been put on hold, saving oil companies like Continental hundreds of millions of dollars in the coming decade.
Other items high on Mr. Hamm’s wish list included rolling back policies that forced automakers to build more electric and hybrid vehicles; and increasing tax breaks for oil companies to pump carbon dioxide underground to extend the life of aging oil fields, like in North Dakota. Mr. Trump has also helped expand exports of natural gas.
There are still some significant obstacles for Continental including the higher Trump-era tariffs that have pushed up prices for drilling equipment. But Mr. Hamm is happy with his friend back in the White House.
“We’re in a very good spot in the U.S.,” Mr. Hamm told oil executives this year. “We are in the era of abundance.”
In August, the Interior Department began to issue Mr. Hamm’s company dozens of new permits to drill in Wyoming’s Converse County.Credit...Loren Elliott for The New York Times
Devon Lum, Laine Cibulskis and Kitty Bennett contributed research.
Eric Lipton is a Times investigative reporter, who digs into a broad range of topics from Pentagon spending to toxic chemicals.
Rebecca F. Elliott covers energy for The Times.
A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 14, 2025, Section BU, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: An Alliance Forged Over Fossil Fuels Helps to Reshape U.S. Energy Policies. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
See more on: U.S. Politics, 2024 Elections: News, Polls and Analysis, U.S. Department of the Interior, Energy Department, U.S., Douglas Burgum, Joe Biden
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