Oil prices will recover as early as the first half of this year as producers cut back, Continental Resources Inc. founder and CEO Harold Hamm said Wednesday. Hamm said Continental, the largest leaseholder and producer in the Bakken shale play of North Dakota and Montana, can weather low crude prices “forever” as it idles wells. He expects other drillers to cut spending by 50 to 75 percent, in line with Continental’s announced reductions. “A lot of people think, well, if you start drilling, you’ve got about a six-month process before you can slow down,” Hamm said in an interview at the Argus Americas Crude Summit in Houston. “Wrong. Because after all, you drill that well, it takes about a month to drill it, or 25 days. You don’t have to complete it.” Spending at Oklahoma City-based Continental will fall by 41 percent to $2.7 billion in 2015 […]