Oklahoma billionaire Harold Hamm is rushing back into the North Dakota Bakken with an ambitious new drilling program after pulling back from the oil shale just a year ago.

Like most drillers operating in North Dakota, Hamm’s Continental Resources slashed spending and drilling plans when oil prices plummeted amid the financial crisis. But with oil prices rebounding, Hamm announced Thursday that Continental Resources would increase next year’s capital expenditure budget to $650 million and expects to have 23 drilling rigs deployed by the middle of next year. The company’s 2009 plans had called for $390 million of capital expenditures and finishing the year with six rigs operating.

Most of Hamm’s new spending is focused on the Bakken Shale, a 200,000-square-mile stretch of Montana, North Dakota and Saskatchewan. The Bakken was just about worthless to oil drillers in the past, but horizontal and fractional drilling techniques have now made the area more economical. Some have even called the Bakken the largest onshore oil discovery in the U.S. in decades.

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