How Plunging Oil Prices Have Created a Volatile New Force in the Global Economy

He’d spent years touting his vision that America would one day dominate one of the world’s most powerful markets. And when Harold Hamm, a pioneer in discovering vast reserves of shale oil under American soil, took the stage in front of several hundred oil luminaries, he never acknowledged that the narrative was in doubt.
“For the next 50 years, we can expect to reap the benefits of the shale revolution,” Hamm said one day this spring. “It’s the biggest thing that ever happened to America.”
But away from the stage, the US oil industry – and Hamm – was in crisis.
In the previous six months, Hamm, founder of oil giant Continental Resources, had lost $6.5bn, more than one-third of his net worth. Behind the low price of a gallon of gas at the pump this summer lies a competition worth trillions of dollars that is capable of swinging the geopolitical balance of power. On one side are Hamm, a famous wildcatter, and other American oilmen who rode the discovery of hydraulic fracturing to tens of billions of dollars of wealth and a promise of, in Hamm’s words, ending the “disastrous” days of Saudi Arabian control. On the other are the Saudis and their allies in the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec), which are trying to stem rising US oil power and maintain their 40 years of dominance.