Post

Fieldnotes
@fieldnotes.co

🚨New from Public Domain + Fieldnotes: When fracking billionaire Harold Hamm’s company, Continental, wanted to drill in Wyoming, it handed federal officials a “roadmap” for how to get around a court injunction blocking new permits and issue them anyway. 🧵: www.publicdomain.media/p/emails-sho...

publicdomain.mediaEmails Show How Interior Dept Delivered New Drilling Permits for Burgum's Billionaire AllyOil and gas giant Continental Resources wanted the Bureau of Land Management to sign off on new wells in Wyoming, despite a court injunction there. The agency obliged.
Fieldnotes
@fieldnotes.co

In April 2025, a Continental employee texted an aide to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to coordinate a meeting with Hamm. While we don’t know what they discussed, hours later Burgum announced plans to open more federal lands to drilling and speed up permitting.

Fieldnotes
@fieldnotes.co

Two months later, Continental sent a top Interior appointee a memo laying out how the Bureau of Land Management could effectively skirt a federal injunction to approve the company’s Wyoming drilling permits.

0 reposts2 likes

Fieldnotes
@fieldnotes.co

Since then: - The BLM closely followed the workaround strategy proposed by Continental - The agency has approved 500+ new wells in Converse County - Continental has gotten permits for 71 new wells in the area

Fieldnotes
@fieldnotes.co

Meanwhile, Hamm is celebrating. “Some of the regulatory hurdles that was there before, they’ve been removed. And that does lower our cost of doing business,” he said at an event in January. Public lands. Private influence. Same story, just more explicit now.