Oct. 30--Harold Hamm knows a bit about the oil business.

He has thrived by zigging when others zagged. Hamm's Enid-based Continental Resources took a "contrarian view" more than 20 years ago, continuing to focus on crude oil when other companies began to turn their attention to natural gas.

He said many of the nation's largest oil companies started looking overseas because of onerous taxes and regulatory hurdles, while others seemingly lost their will to drill for oil in the United States.

"Unlike a lot of our friends and neighbors, we've pursued a different track and found out that there's still a lot of crude oil in this country," Hamm said.

The Enid oilman is speaking out to dispel what he calls "myths" dogging the oil industry, as talk about alternative energy sources rises to a crescendo.

"A lot of people don't realize that the United States is the third largest crude oil producer in the world," he said. "It's Saudi Arabia, Russia and us. These are just facts."

Bruce Bell, chairman of the Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association of Oklahoma, agrees that people aren't getting the right information about the oil and gas information, as the truth has been obscured by politics and environmental concerns.

Bell said oil may not be a politically correct energy option, but it is more reliable than anything else available now.

"Renewables are great, but there just isn't any chance that they can replace hydrocarbons in the near future," he said.

Power isn't everything Hamm said misinformation about the oil industry is allowed to take hold because people have only paid attention to the major companies that turned their attention to other countries in search of the new major oil discovery.

"When people think of oil in America, they're thinking of Big Oil, and that's just not right," Hamm said.

Independent oil producers, such as Continental, still are drilling oil wells all over the U.S.

"Currently 90 percent of the wells are drilled by independents," Hamm said.

He said technological advances are allowing producers to unearth vast new caches of oil and gas, pointing to the Bakken Shale play stretching through North Dakota, Montana and Canada.

"We're producing a lot more domestically ... than anybody's giving credit for," Hamm said.

The U.S. Geological Survey has estimated there is up to 4.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil in the American part of that play.

Hamm said the nearby Three Fork/Sanish formation has similar potential, so there is no reason to think the United States is running out of oil.

"It's not going to happen," he said.

Hamm said he expects upcoming changes in the way the government estimates oil reserves to affect the way people view the oil industry.

"It's going to add a lot of proven reserves to the books," he said.

Hamm acknowledged the United States has relied too much on foreign oil, rather than developing its own reserves, but that is changing.

Ethanol in gasoline and increased natural gas use has cut import figures down to 54 percent, he said, while increased domestic production can cut that number even more.

Hamm said he expects increasing oil prices to lead to additional resources being committed to oil exploration.

Such exploration accounts for only 30 percent of U.S. drilling, he said, but that figure was as low as 15 percent before a precipitous drop in natural gas prices.

Hamm said he expects people to learn that many commonly held beliefs about the oil industry are not accurate.

"When most people get a hold of the facts, they generally change their opinion," he said.

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