President-elect Donald Trump’s decision Thursday to tap North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum as Interior secretary likely ensures that the agency will put oil and gas front and center for the next four years.
The Republican and longtime Trump loyalist would oversee a sprawling department of roughly 70,000 employees that manages the nation’s public lands and its vast energy resources. The pick of Burgum, whose state ranks third in the nation for production of crude oil, underscores Trump’s commitment to increasing drilling access across federal lands.
“We are going to do things with energy and land — Interior — that is incredible,” Trump said Thursday night at the America First Policy Institute gala, where he announced his plans to nominate Burgum. “He’s going to head the Department of Interior, and he’s going to be fantastic.”
If confirmed by the Senate, Burgum would be the 55th leader of the Interior Department, taking the place of President Joe Biden’s Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.
Interior secretaries often hail from Western states with ample public land and federally owned natural resources like coal and crude oil. That’s not the case for Burgum. His home state is rich in energy development but does not have extensive public lands or federal minerals. Less than 4 percent of North Dakota is federal land, and the Department of Interior manages roughly 4 million acres of federal and Indian Trust minerals in the state.
Burgum’s dark-horse bid for the Republican presidential nomination launched him toward prominence in the energy world and his alliance with Trump. During the campaign, Trump repeatedly praised Burgum and his energy record, telling one crowd that Burgum “probably knows more about energy than anybody I know.”
Trump’s announcement of Burgum received mixed reactions Thursday.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, chair of the Republican Governors Association, called Burgum a “strong leader with a long track record of both preserving our natural heritage while advocating for reforms that would put our natural resources to use.”
But several environmental groups were critical of the nomination.
“Burgum will be a disastrous Secretary of the Interior who’ll sacrifice our public lands and endangered wildlife on the altar of the fossil fuel industry’s profits,” Kierán Suckling, executive director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement.
Burgum is a wealthy former software executive who was elected governor in 2016. He came into political office with no energy sector experience.
But North Dakota is among the states most transformed by the shale drilling boom that started around 2010 and spread around the country. Burgum recognized how important oil and gas had become for the state and the nation, said Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council in an interview before the Interior announcement Thursday.
Ness said Burgum was a quick study.
“It’s quite been interesting to watch him over time become just an absolute oil and gas expert, in terms of how to move energy policy and what it means to our country,” he said.
Burgum touts the advantages of domestic oil and gas production and says he believes in “innovation over regulation.”
Burgum was a harsh critic of the Biden administration’s efforts to tackle climate change. But his views don’t mimic those of Trump, who dismisses human-made warming as a “hoax.” Burgum is far less combative, avoiding the topic of how fossil fuels drive climate change. He pledged to make his state carbon-neutral by the end of the decade.
He wants to achieve carbon neutrality not by cutting back on fossil fuel use but by burying the carbon dioxide they produce underground — a technology the Biden administration is also pushing. It’s at the center of EPA’s proposed rule to slash power plant carbon emissions.
Under Burgum, North Dakota became the first state granted primacy by EPA to oversee specialized injection wells for CO2, and the state is the endpoint for pipeline developer Summit Carbon’s planned $8 billion project to transport CO2 from dozens of Midwest ethanol plants.
“He’s not going to be all fossil fuel, but he’s not gonna be about an energy transition either. He’s about trying to essentially create ‘fossil fuel light’ through carbon capture,” said Scott Skokos, executive director of the Dakota Resource Council, in an interview before Burgum’s nomination announcement. “That’s what I would say is the No. 1 policy you’re gonna see from him.”
Burgum has also been an advocate of hydrogen and hydrogen hubs, another contrast with Trump, who has derided hydrogen cars as prone to exploding.
