BISMARCK – Donald Trump will speak in Bismarck this month during the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference, an oil industry group announced Wednesday.

The Republican presidential candidate will be the keynote speaker at 1 p.m. Thursday, May 26, at the Bismarck Event Center, said Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council.

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Tickets will be available for $30 for about 5,000 to 6,000 attendees. Tickets will go on sale at 11:30 a.m. Monday, May 9, at www.ticketmaster.com or the Bismarck Event Center box office, (800) 745-3000.

Ness encouraged people to get their tickets early.

“We have no idea what the interest level is going to be, but if you look across the country, it’s been high everywhere,” he said.

Those who pay $400 to register for the full May 24-26 conference will be guaranteed to see Trump. More than 1,650 people were registered for the conference earlier this week, and that figure is expected to grow after Wednesday’s announcement.

The campaigns for both Trump and Ted Cruz had expressed interest in the conference, the industry group said last week. Cruz dropped out of the presidential race Tuesday night after Trump won Indiana’s primary.

Ness said conference organizers will try to have Trump address questions that are important to North Dakota residents. Attendees also are looking forward to hearing about Trump’s plan for energy development, Ness said.

“I’m hoping now that he focuses now on more policy-driven issues rather than the combative nature of multiple candidates vying for the nomination,” Ness said.

Ness said if Democratic candidates express interest in speaking at the conference, the oil industry group will make room for them, too.

North Dakota Republican Party Chairman Kelly Armstrong said it’s “incredibly great for North Dakota” that the Republican frontrunner for president is going to check out the petroleum conference.

“We have a lot to be proud of out here” despite the downturn, Armstrong said. “We’ve made the United States way less dependent on Mideast oil, and that’s a big deal.”

Armstrong said if Trump requests to meet with the state’s 28 delegates to the Republican National Convention July 18-21 in Cleveland, the state party will set it up.

“I think all of our delegates would like the chance to sit down with him, and it’s the perfect situation,” he said.

Armstrong said his sense was that North Dakota had “a very pro-Cruz delegation, and I don’t know how many of those people are the never-Trump people.” A Forum News Service survey of the 25 delegates who were elected April 3 at the state GOP convention afterward found at least 17 were supporting Cruz or leaning that way a couple days after the convention.

“My general overall sense, and this is just my feeling, is there is not going to be much of an appetite from the North Dakota delegation to throw this thing off the rails,” said Armstrong, one of the state’s three automatic delegates to the national convention. “I don’t think there’s a whole lot of appetite to pull somebody out of the bleachers.”

“I know a lot of the people who were pro-Cruz felt that if Cruz didn’t win it, it should go to Trump because of how he’s performed,” he added.

Armstrong said some delegates will have a tough time lining up behind Trump, while others like him are going to line up behind whomever the party puts up against Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, whose policies and rhetoric on oil and coal he called “terrible” for North Dakota. Armstrong, a state senator from Dickinson, said he will vote for Trump “unless something drastically changes between now and July.”

Former state representative Bette Grande of Fargo, who chaired Cruz’s campaign in North Dakota, called his decision to suspend his campaign “sad” but said she wasn’t surprised after Trump handily won Tuesday’s primary in Indiana.

Grande said she still plans to cast her first ballot for Cruz at the national convention.

“His campaign is suspended. That doesn’t mean that the ballot changes. Trump still doesn’t have 1,237 (delegates needed to become the presumptive nominee), and even at that point, it doesn’t make it a mandate. And I think what’s important is that we still speak up for the principles and values that we were campaigning for to start with,” she said.

Grande said she could eventually support Trump “if he comes around to understanding the constitutional values.”

Department of Mineral Resources Director Lynn Helms dropped a hint about the speaker Tuesday night to attendees at an oil industry event in Williston.

“I think we’re going to have a pretty amazing speaker at the end of the conference, but it’s not announced yet,” Helms told the Williston Basin chapter of the American Petroleum Institute.

The event also features famed college football coach Lou Holtz and CEOs of several oil companies that operate in the Bakken.

For more information, visit https://www.wbpcnd.org.