By: Mary Steurer

BISMARCK, N.D. (North Dakota Monitor) – The Industrial Commission held off on picking North Dakota’s next top oil regulator for another week to 10 days after public interviews of both finalists.

“I feel like we’ve got two strong candidates here that are very different, one who’s got a lot of experience on the regulation side, the other one’s got great experience on the private sector side,” Gov. Doug Burgum said at the Tuesday afternoon hearing. “I think what’s missing for me is not ‘Do we have strong candidates?’ It’s, ‘What are the exact needs of the agency right now?’”

The commission hasn’t yet announced a firm date for when it will make its final decision. 

The Industrial Commission seeks a successor for Lynn Helms, who served as director of Mineral Resources for nearly 20 years.

In all, 16 people applied for the director position. The search committee spoke with five semi finalists before advancing Nathan Anderson and Kevin Connors to the final round of interviews. Only the names of finalists are public under North Dakota law.

Anderson, a Colorado resident, has about 25 years of industry experience working across states including North Dakota, Texas, Ohio and Michigan.

He works for Chevron in Colorado and owns a company called 3B Investments. 

The Minot native earned a bachelor’s degree in geology from North Dakota State University.

He said previous employees have described him as a fair, empathetic, trusting and empowering leader.

Connors, meanwhile, works for the University of North Dakota’s Energy and Environmental Research Center. He has previous experience at the Department of Mineral Resources, spending eight of those years in the Oil and Gas Division. 

Connors said that his prior history working for the state means he already has partnerships with North Dakota oil and gas regulators and other state agencies.

The Bismarck resident’s current role at the EERC is assistant director for regulatory compliance and energy policy. He works extensively with carbon capture. 

He earned his bachelor’s degree in geology from the University of Montana.

Connors described his leadership style as “shepherd”-like.

“I come from a culture at the EERC where we are laser-focused on employee development and leadership,” he said.

In both interviews, members of the Industrial Commission made it clear they want a director that can carry on Helms’ legacy. 

“He’s been in the role for so long, he kind of defines what it is,” Burgum said while interviewing Anderson. “How does this mission of this particular role resonate with you?”

Anderson said he would strive to keep North Dakota a pro-business, pro-energy state.

“One hundred percent, North Dakota will have a seat at the energy table — and a front row seat at that,” Anderson said.

Connors, who worked with Helms, said he considers the former director a mentor and friend.

“I saw the way Lynn had to switch gears throughout the day,” Connors said. “I really worked hard to try to position myself to be able to have that skill set.”

During the meeting, the commission also approved an agreement to continue working with Helms on a contract basis until the next director starts.

Helms will advise the agency on technical cases and help prepare for new leadership, said Reice Haase, deputy executive director for the Industrial Commission.

After postponing the vote to pick a new director, Burgum noted he wished that the state would consider adding a new position to the Department of Mineral Resources so that the agency could hire both candidates.

“Man, why wouldn’t we get both these guys going?” Burgum said. “There’s only one role on paper. We can’t fix that necessarily now without a change in legislation, but I’m almost ready to ask the Industrial Commission, as another project, let’s think about what drafting that would be like.”

The Industrial Commission is comprised of Burgum, Attorney General Drew Wrigley and Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring. The Department of Mineral Resources serves as the oil and gas industry regulator in North Dakota, the nation’s No. 3 oil producing state.

GRAND FORKS – A NASA astronaut and the first North Dakotan in space received the state’s highest civilian honor at a Tuesday press event at UND.

Jim Buchli has “literally gone further and flown higher than any North Dakotan in history,” said Gov. Doug Burgum as he awarded Buchli the Theodore Roosevelt Rough Rider Award.

The Rough Rider award, first presented in 1961, honors North Dakotans who have received national recognition for their achievements, and have included authors, businessmen and Secret Service agents.

A portrait of Buchli, the award’s 49th recipient, will hang beside other Rough Riders in the State Capitol.

Local and state elected officials, UND administrators and faculty and Buchli’s family and friends were on hand to honor him at Robin Hall, home of the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences.

Buchli, a New Rockford, North Dakota native, graduated from the Naval Academy in 1967 and served a tour in Vietnam as a Marine infantry officer before enrolling in naval flight officer training.

In 1978, he was selected as one of the 35 members of Astronaut Group 8, the first new crop since the Apollo program more than a decade before.

He went on to fly four Space Shuttle missions between 1985 and 1991, including the penultimate flight of the Challenger shuttle. He was inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2019.

Buchli became friends and fishing buddies with John Odegard and helped to support the establishment of the Space Studies program in the 1980s. Among those who endorsed Buchli for the Rough Rider award was Space Studies department chair Pablo de Leon.

Former Aerospace dean Bruce Smith borrowed a line from an endorsement letter from UND Aerospace Foundation chair Larry Martin in making the case for Buchli’s candidacy: “He’s an astronaut, for crying out loud.”

Burgum, himself a former Rough Rider award recipient, focused on Buchli’s ascent from a small town kid in a Class B athletics program to an elite class of modern-day explorers.

“He’s come back here and helped inspire generations of kids, and with his support, generations of students at UND will have the tools and inspiration and understanding of our universe to aspire to do this,” Burgum said.

Buchli thanked his wife and family for their support, and credited his North Dakota upbringing to his success as a pilot and astronaut.

“North Dakota is a unique place, and all of us that have come from here have benefited greatly,” he said. “Our teachers, adult leaders, coaches and all the friends were inspirational and extremely good role models.”

He similarly expressed confidence in the nation’s youth, noting the college students he’d met were “a lot smarter than we ever were.”

After his portrait was unveiled, Buchli presented Burgum with a state flag that had flown with him on his first spaceflight in 1985, which the governor accepted on behalf of the state.

Burgum, tongue in cheek, gave Buchli a flag that had flown over the State Capitol on Monday as a replacement.

Joshua Irvine covers K-12 and higher education as well as the Grand Forks County Commission for the Grand Forks Herald. He joined the Herald in October 2023.

MINOT — “He doesn’t want to be pigeonholed as just an agriculture and energy guy, I’m told, though that’s a natural reflection of where he’s been doing his governing,” I wrote in a column over the weekend, referring to Gov. Doug Burgum’s ongoing campaign to be a part of the Donald Trump administration.

Now that his presidential and vice presidential campaigns are over, having ended unsuccessfully, it’s been widely expected that Burgum will get a cabinet posting. And the most talked about positions, given that he’s the governor of North Dakota, where agriculture and energy are the dominant economic drivers, are Secretary of Agriculture or Secretary of Energy.

But that’s not where Burgum is pointing himself. “Burgum has his eyes set higher, perhaps on one of the top-tier seats,” I wrote. “Secretary of state? Secretary of the Treasury?”

According to a report from Axios today,

“Former President Trump’s two veep runners-up, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, are in the running for secretary of state.”

The other names mentioned in the article for that post are Sen. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee and Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, though the latter is said to prefer Secretary of Defense.

The State Department does make some sense for Burgum. It does jibe with the themes of his own presidential campaign, which were all about using America’s prodigious economic might — of which energy and agriculture are a not insubstantial part — as a lever in world diplomacy. After all, that’s the game China and Russia are playing.

Of course, for Burgum or any other Republican to get an appointment, Trump has to actually win the election, and that’s looking like a far less certain thing than it did a couple of weeks ago. The polls have shown that Vice President Kamala Harris has closed the deficit incumbent President Joe Biden had against Trump in the polls and some of the latest polling has her

opening a small lead.

This talk of which Republican will get which post in a second Trump administration smacks of some premature drape-measuring.

Still, it wouldn’t be surprising that Trump would be deeply concerned about who staffs his cabinet. Moreso, even, than the typical presidential candidate, given that dozens of people who served in his previous administration, including those who filled top-level positions like secretary of defense and secretary of state, now oppose his reelection.

“Trump constantly tells friends he felt burned by disloyal Cabinet officials and staff last time around,”

Axios reports.

“This time, he wants people he can trust both to implement his policies and never block his will.”

Trump doesn’t want a “team of rivals,” in other words. He wants sycophants and yes-men.

And Burgum,

with all the bowing and scraping he’s done since ending his own presidential campaign,

has positioned himself perfectly for the gig.