North Dakota’s top oil regulator says he’s excited about the prospect of having more petroleum geologists trained in the state.
Continental Resources Inc. and its chairman, Harold Hamm, are donating $10 million to set up a new geology school at UND. The program expects to graduate 50 petroleum geologists and engineers each year.
State Department of Mineral Resources director Lynn Helms says North Dakota college students now have to go out of state to get the kind of training they’ll now be able to get at UND.
Helms says the industry’s growth in North Dakota should provide a lot of high-paying professional jobs.