Good morning; here's what the Oilman has for you today:

• De-dollarization of Energy Trade Continues

• The Oilman’s Billionaire of the Week

• Upcoming Oil and Gas Events

• Tweet of the Day

De-dollarization of Energy Trade Continues

The de-dollarization story made a few hundred headlines last year when Russia and China teamed up to challenge the currency hegemon.

But news reports about yet another deal settled in yuan did not stop.

The process is still taking place. It’s just not being talked about so much.

Gas for yuan

This March, China’s CNOOC sold French TotalEnergies a cargo of LNG.

TotalEnergies paid for the cargo in yuan.

And it wasn’t Chinese LNG, either. It was Qatari LNG.

Then, this month, Reuters reported that Indian refiners have started paying for Russian oil in Chinese currency.

You can dismiss this as a consequence of the Western sanctions against Russia, and you’d be right.

The problem is, it could be the beginning of more consequences that could ultimately result in the dollar losing its global power.

Just because it’s happening slowly doesn’t mean it’s not happening

You can dismiss an LNG cargo for TotalEnergies or some payments for sanctioned Russian oil.

But it’s harder to dismiss declarations like the one made by Brazil’s president recently.

What did he say?

Well, he said he wanted to deal more in yuan for bilateral trade with China; that’s what he said.

We’re talking government policy here, not an LNG cargo.

Corporate policy, too.

Whirlpool, a U.S. company, no less, has plans to start settling payments related to its Argentina factory in yuan.

The Oilman bets we’ll be seeing more news like this in the coming years.

Today’s Edition Is Brought To You By ROX Exploration

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Billy of the Week, Harold Hamm: Part Two

From tank trucks to oil wells

Harold Hamm’s first company was not a exploration and production firm. Named Harold Hamm Tank Trucks, it did what it said on the label.

Soon after he set it up, however, Hamm got tempted to try his hand at wildcatting.

He started another company named Shelly Dean Oil Co., and in 1971, he drilled his first well, Eldon Cook #2.

That first well was supposed to be a theory Hamm had earlier, based on data gleaned from local well logs.

That data suggested there must be a rather large oil reservoir in the vicinity that could be untapped yet.

And that’s exactly what happened: Eldon Cook #2 pumped oil at a rate of 20 barrels per hour, and the second well Ham drilled on what later became known as the Oakdale field pumped at 75 barrels per hour.

North Dakota and the big break

Throughout the 1980s, Hamm stayed focused on Oklahoma, but in the early 1990s, he got interested in North Dakota’s oil potential.

He also got interested in horizontal drilling.

The reason he got interested in North Dakota specifically was Canadian legislation that had encouraged a lot of horizontal drilling north of the border.

If there was so much oil on that side of the border, Hamm figured, there must be some on this side, too.

It turned out there was quite a bit of oil on this side of the border: Hamm had struck the Cedar Hills field, which was the seventh largest in the Lower 48.

The Bakken bet

Continental Resources bought 300,000 acres in the Bakken Formation in early 2003.

The Bakken play turned out to be the biggest oil discovery since the Prudhoe Bay in Alaska in 1968, as Bloomberg wrote back in 2012, dubbing Hamm “the man who bought the Bakken.”

“I find oil,” Hamm says.

“In America, people lost the will to drill for oil. But I’m a little more hardheaded than other people.”

And hardheadedness paid handsomely for the founder of Continental Resources.

Upcoming Oil & Gas Events

• July 19-20: 2023 Independent Petroleum Association of New Mexico Annual Meeting

• July 20: Bakken Classic Fishing Derby

• July 28: SOOGA Annual Industry Boat Ride, Valley Gem, Marietta, OH

Around the Global Patch

🌍 Europe's shift to solar dims U.S. natural gas.
🇨🇳 China's domestic carmakers outshine the West.
🇷🇺 Russian oil exports hit a record low.

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