BISMARCK – For more than a quarter century, Lynn Helms has headed the agency that regulates one of North Dakota’s most important industries: oil and natural gas production.

After 26 years of government service, the director of the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources has retired. His last day of work was June 30.

Helms led the department through an oil boom that made North Dakota one of the nation's largest oil-producing states, a price crash that threw thousands of energy workers out of work, and the coronavirus pandemic. He was known for issuing regulations that inspired policies in other states.

In an interview with The Forum, Helms said the job isn't about the money or fame. What's most important to him is working with his team and knowing he's making a positive impact on the people of North Dakota, he said.

“I would say this job offers the opportunity to make a difference in the life of every North Dakotan,” he said. “That's the most gratifying thing in life.”

Helms said he came to North Dakota in 1980 to work in Williston as a production engineer for Amerada Hess Corp., now known as Hess Corp. At the time, North Dakota was in the midst of an oil boom that ended in the mid-1980s.

He said he had a good career at Hess. In the 1990s, when a team project he was leading in North Dakota ended, he faced a decision: move to Houston or find another job.

He said he loved North Dakota and wanted to stay. His predecessor in the North Dakota Oil and Gas Division, Wesley Norton, retired and Helms became director of the government agency in July 1998.

“It was just an incredible opportunity,” Helms said.

In 2005, North Dakota renamed its Division of Oil and Gas the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources. Around the same time, the department began to see oil companies begin drilling in the Bakken region of Montana.

Most people didn't realize how big the next oil boom would be and how far it would extend into North Dakota, Helms said. He and a handful of other North Dakota regulators began preparing.

“Four or five people in the world believed that Bakken in North Dakota was going to be a really big deal,” he said.

At the height of the Bakken boom in North Dakota, there were 218 drilling rigs exploring for oil in May 2012, according to the Department of Mineral Resources. In May of this year, however, there were only 37.

The highest daily production during the boom was 1.2 million barrels, or 50.4 million gallons, of oil, according to the Ministry of Mineral Resources.

By 2012, North Dakota had become the second-largest oil producer, second only to Texas. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the two states produced nearly half of the country's oil by 2014.

During the oil boom, North Dakota's population exploded, rising from fewer than 658,000 residents in 2008 to nearly 739,000 in 2014—a 12% increase in six years.

“I'm pretty proud that our state has gone from a place where the population got smaller and older every census to a place where the population is getting larger and younger,” he said. “It's all thanks to the energy boom.”

As head of the Ministry of Mineral Resources, Helms drafted policies to regulate oil and natural gas production.

“There are companies that probably don't need a lot of regulation. They always want to do the right thing,” he said. “But there are also a lot of private investors and oil and gas operators that will only do the right thing if they are forced to.”

He pointed to challenges such as the water supply for fracking, a drilling method known as fracking that involves injecting large amounts of water, sand and chemicals deep into the ground to break up rock and allow oil to flow to the surface through drilling rigs.

He pointed out that the method has come under criticism because the chemicals used in fracking could potentially contaminate underground water supplies, particularly in Pennsylvania.

“We had to work really hard to make the public understand what we were doing differently, what made our geology and our practices different,” he said.

Flaring, or the burning of gas from oil wells, also became a problem. During the boom, the industry burned up to 36 percent of its natural gas.

Helms helped develop regulations to reduce flaring and require companies to implement gas capture plans.

“This is an area where we had to strongly disagree with the industry and take the position that there are limits to how quickly we can increase oil production,” he said.

Other states have taken similar measures because North Dakota took the initiative, he said. The state now produces 95 percent of its natural gas itself and burns the rest.

“It happened here first,” he said.

During the oil boom, oil and produced water leaks became a common problem. The Tesoro pipeline leak near Tioga in 2013 became one of the largest in U.S. history when 840,000 gallons seeped into the ground.

According to media reports, the cleanup work took five years and cost around $100 million.

From 2014 to 2015, a pipeline north of Williston released 70,000 barrels, or nearly 3 million gallons, of produced water – or brine. It is believed to be the largest domestic spill in U.S. history and resulted in $36 million in criminal and civil penalties for Summit Midstream, the company that owned the pipeline.

These leaks were “crisis incidents,” Helms said. Regulators found that the pipelines, built between 2009 and 2012, were not independently monitored and were poorly constructed, he said. The pipeline operators did not share data, meaning the leaks could last for several days, he said.

North Dakota has become a national leader in oil and gas regulation, Helms said. Other states are taking their cues from North Dakota when it comes to carbon storage, fracking, gas extraction and information-sharing databases, he said.

Helms created a press secretary position to handle media inquiries during the boom and held “director's cuts,” monthly livestreamed press conferences about oil and gas production.

“It was one of the best decisions I ever made because you have to have someone focused on it,” he said. “The energy industry has such a big impact on the citizens of North Dakota that you just have to constantly talk to them.”

Alison Ritter was Helms' first spokesperson and worked for the Department of Mineral Resources from 2011 to 2018. She recalled several interview requests from Helms and information from the department during the boom.

Helms wanted to make it clear to communities what impact oil production would have on their residents, Ritter said.

“He wanted to tell the story of North Dakota,” she said.

Ritter called her time at Helms “one of the best times of my career.” Helms took the time to listen to and understand people, and he worked with them to make sure every job they did was done right, she said.

“Lynn is a very special man,” she said. “He has an incredible ability to break down a very complicated issue in a way that people can understand.”

Helms was an “extremely brilliant man,” said Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council. Helms used science to develop reasonable regulations without hindering oil production, and companies rarely challenged him, Ness said.

“The reality is that we have strict but smart regulations in North Dakota,” he said.

Helms said it's easy to kill an idea before it can be implemented. Still, he has tried to separate regulation from promotion, he said.

“I always told Ron (Ness) that his job was to promote the industry,” Helms said. “My job was to promote and regulate the production of the resource, oil, as his industry did.”