At the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference, the founder of Continental Resources told a room of 2,700 oil and gas leaders what the Bakken has been waiting to hear since January.

Continental Resources is drilling again in North Dakota before the end of 2026.

In January, Hamm pulled every rig out of North Dakota for the first time in 30 years. The man who proved the Bakken would work. The man who drilled the first commercially successful horizontal Bakken well in 2004. The man who built the company that holds 1.3 million acres in the Williston Basin. He walked away from all of it because oil was $60 a barrel and the math didn't work.

Yesterday the math worked.

His Exact Words

"A great deal has changed." "We'll be back to work. But we're not giving it away now."

What changed is the Iran war. The Strait of Hormuz has been disrupted since February. 20 million barrels a day of global supply choked off. WTI sitting near $100. The same basin Hamm walked away from in January is now printing money again.

And It's Not Just Continental

North Dakota's top oil regulator Nathan Anderson confirmed what every hand in the field is hoping for: "I've heard not only Continental... I've heard another company that's going to pick up another rig."

23 rigs are running in North Dakota right now. That number is about to move.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers also signed the final Record of Decision on the Dakota Access Pipeline. A decade of legal battles. A decade of protests. A decade of uncertainty over the single most important piece of oil infrastructure in the state. It's permanent now. More than 500,000 barrels a day of Bakken crude — fully authorized — pipeline secure.

The man who built the Bakken came to Bismarck and put his name on the recovery. Rigs are coming back. Pipeline is secured. The Bakken isn't finished. Not even close.