Harold Hamm on New US Gulf Coast Crude Benchmark

Like all oil producers, when the price of WTI plunged way below zero as the May contract expired on April 20, Harold Hamm watched in dismay and disbelief. Something was seriously not right. Something was broken.

But unlike others, the chairman and founder of U.S. shale producer Continental Resources Inc., which bills itself as America’s oil champion, sprang into action. “I’m a very positive person and I look for solutions, so I knew we had to do something to make the market work,” Hamm told Hart Energy in an exclusive interview.

Hamm marshaled his forces and became a founding member of the American GulfCoast Select Best Practices Task Force Association. For two months, the group has been talking to large producers, traders, midstream companies, refiners, consultants, the companies that publish commodity benchmark prices and the commodity exchanges—Intercontinental Exchange and Nymex.