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

• California Legislators Shelve Oil Divestment Bill

• The Oilman’s Billy of the Week: Harold Hamm

• Upcoming Oil and Gas events

• Tweet of the Day

California Legislators Shelve Oil Divestment Bill

Climate advocates in California suffered a blow when the State Assembly shelved a bill that would have obliged pension funds to divest their oil and gas holdings.

They’re not giving up, however, and the bill will reappear during the next session.

Pension funds get a breather

Under the proposed bill, Calpers and CalSTRS would have been forced to stop investing in oil and gas in 2024.

They would have also been obliged to divest from their holdings in Big Oil by 2031.

Calpers was openly against the proposal.

And that’s because Calpers knows what makes money.

CEO Marcie Frost said such a bill would “do nothing to combat the dangers of climate change.” 

Indeed, the only thing it would do was cut off the funds’ access to a piece of the profit pie that Big Oil baked last year and may yet bake in the future.

Of course, the danger’s not gone because climate advocates are a determined bunch.

The bill’s author, Lena Gonzalez, vowed to bring it back next year.

Yet California’s Democrats remain split on the topic, so there’s hope.

Follow the investment banks

It seems California’s pension funds, for all their climate pledges, have some misgivings about exiting oil and gas.

Pretty much like BlackRock and its fellows when Republican states started threatening with divesting billions of dollars in pension fund money.

Suddenly, climate-conscious asset managers became fans of oil and gas and Texas.

Suddenly, top asset managers were reluctant to force oil divestments on their clients.

Makes you wonder why, right?

It is significant, though, that it’s Californian lawmakers who are voting against forced oil divestments.

California is, after all, the poster child of the transition.

Maybe those divestments would be one step too far in endangering the pension money of millions.

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The Oilman’s Billy of the Month: Harold Hamm

A truly American self-made man

Harold Hamm, the founder of Continental Resources, has a net worth of $18.5 billion.

His company is the biggest shale oil player in the Bakken.

And it’s really his: Hamm took Continental private last year for $27 billion.

Not too shabby for the youngest of 13 children in a sharecropper’s family.

A busy childhood

Hamm says that he can’t remember a time when he didn’t work.

From early childhood, he and his siblings pitched in with their parents on every tenant farm they worked.

Hamm was regularly behind on his schoolwork because of his farming chores, but that didn’t sap his thirst for knowledge.

Or, indeed, passion.

In an autobiographical piece for Forbes, Hamm recalls a moment of epiphany when he watched a potter work clay.

The message of the potter, he wrote, was that everyone could do well in life if they followed their passion.

This led to a question: What is my passion in life?

The answer came a day later in the form of a high-school thesis on why Hamm wanted to become what was back then called an oil explorationist.

Right place, right time

Perhaps if the family hadn’t moved to Enid, Oklahoma, Hamm would have pursued another path.

But they did move to Enid, and young Harold found himself smack in the middle of an oil boom.

"One of the reasons I became interested in oil and gas in the first place is because I saw the generosity of oil industry leaders," Hamm says.

“They were willing to show a hungry young man about the industry, to teach me what they'd spent so many years learning,” he shares in the Forbes piece.

After working in virtually every part of the oil industry, Hamm began exploring for oil in earnest.

He struck his first oil well at the age of 25.

Upcoming Oil & Gas Events

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

• July 20: Bakken Classic Fishing Derby

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