Helms, Burgum, Trump rail against regulation at oil conference

Lynn Helms, director of the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources, address the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference on Thursday, May 16, 2024, in Bismarck, North Dakota. (Jeff Beach/North Dakota Monitor)

North Dakota’s top oil and gas regulator offered some advice Thursday for his successor — “get out of the way.” 

“Oil and gas needs to make money,” said Lynn Helms, who is retiring at the end of June as the director of the Department of Mineral Resources. He said that if the next director keeps that in mind on a daily basis, they will be successful. 

Helms made his comments on the final day of the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference in Bismarck. 

The conference included a tribute to Helms, who has been North Dakota’s top oil regulator since 1998 and has overseen the state’s oil boom in the 21st century. The conference theme has been celebrating hitting the 5 billion barrels of oil mark from North Dakota’s Bakken oil formation. 

Helms highlighted another number in his presentation – North Dakota’s oil industry capturing 2 billion barrels of natural gas liquids. He said those natural gas liquids are being turned into plastics used in the health care industry as well as for energy. 

He credited the oil industry for reducing the amount of gas that is flared, or burned away at the well site. The industry flared up to 36% of natural gas during the height of the boom. Most recently, the percent of natural gas flared was at 5%.

“You solved the problem,” Helms told the industry leaders at the conference, which attracted more than 2,200 people. 

Helms said the problem was solved by industry innovation backed up by state rules ensuring that gas capture was implemented industrywide. 

Helms called government regulation “a necessary evil.” 

Gov. Doug Burgum and a video message from Donald Trump continued the anti-regulation rhetoric. 

Burgum said there is not a person in North Dakota that has not benefited from the oil and gas industry and the tax revenue it provides to the state. 

But he said a continuation of the Biden administration threatens the fossil fuel industry with a “gale force wind in our face” from the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ environmental assessment of the Dakota Access Pipeline that has been moving oil from North Dakota since 2017. 

Trump highlighted his approval of the Dakota Access and the Keystone XL pipelines while he was president. 

“Joe Biden killed the Keystone XL pipeline and his electric vehicle mandate, one of the great disasters of all time, is an attempt to ban gasoline-powered cars and trucks,” Trump said in his message to the conference. 

Harold Hamm of Continental Resources introduced the Trump video and said he had dinner with the former president on Monday in New York, where Trump is on trial. 

“He’s been held captive,” Hamm said, and kept from campaigning for another term as president.

Burgum has endorsed Trump for president in 2024 after abandoning his own presidential campaign and went to New York on Monday to support Trump. 

Burgum said his speech was not a political speech but he repeatedly criticized the Biden administration and called for bringing in an administration this fall that “understands what you do to make the world safe and America prosper.” 

After Burgum’s address, Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council said, “I think that guy would make a pretty good vice president.” 

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