Finalists named to be North Dakota’s top oil regulator

Oil pump jacks operate against a backdrop of western North Dakota near Killdeer on Feb. 1, 2024. (Jeff Beach/North Dakota Monitor)

A search committee to find the next director of the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources on Friday selected two finalists.

The finalists, Nathan Anderson and Kevin Connors, both with experience in North Dakota, will be considered by the state Industrial Commission.

The Industrial Commission meets next on July 30. The commission is comprised of Gov. Doug Burgum, Attorney General Drew Wrigley and Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring.

The search committee screened candidates to replace Lynn Helms, who retired June 30 as director of the Department of Mineral Resources.

The department serves as the oil and gas industry regulator in North Dakota, the nation’s No. 3 oil producing state.

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Anderson is a Minot native and has a geology degree from North Dakota State University. He is working for Chevron and lists himself as the owner of 3B Investments.

He lists extensive experience in the Delaware Basin of west Texas and New Mexico and also has worked in North Dakota, Colorado, Ohio and Michigan.

Connors has a geology degree from the University of Montana and works in Bismarck as the assistant director for regulatory compliance and energy policy with the Energy and Environmental Research Center based at the University of North Dakota.

He has previous experience with the Department of Mineral Resources, with eight years in its Oil and Gas Division.

The search committee did not establish a salary range for the job. Helms had an annual salary of $292,847.

Helms was appointed to lead the Oil and Gas Division in 1998. In 2005, the Oil and Gas Division merged with the North Dakota Geological Survey and was reorganized as the Department of Mineral Resources, with Helms as director.

In May, Helms publicly advised his successor to “get out of the way” to allow innovation in the industry and called regulation a “necessary evil.”

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