BISMARCK, N.D. — Donald Trump gave Doug Burgum a singular mission, appointing the governor of oil-rich North Dakota to head an agency that oversees half a billion acres of federal lands and vast areas offshore: “Baby drilling”.
This diktat from the president-elect’s announcement of Burgum as Interior secretary paves the way for a resumption of the legal battles over public lands and waters that helped define Trump’s first term, environmentalists concerned about climate change having already pledged their opposition.
Burgum is an ultra-rich entrepreneur in the software industry who grew up on his family farm. He represents a tame choice compared to other Trump Cabinet picks.
Public lands experts said his experience as a popular two-term governor who aligned himself with environmental advocate Teddy Roosevelt suggests a willingness to collaborate, rather than dismantle the agency he is charged with direct.
This could help ease his confirmation and pave the way for the new administration to move quickly to open more public lands to development and commercial use.
“Burgum seems to me to be a credible candidate who could do a credible job as Interior secretary,” said John Leshy, who served as Interior attorney under former President Bill Clinton.
“He is not a right-wing radical on public lands,” added Leshy, a professor emeritus at the University of California, San Francisco, law school.
Land frictions
The Interior Department manages about a fifth of the nation’s land with a mandate that spans from wildlife conservation and recreation to natural resource extraction and fulfilling treaty obligations with Native American tribes.
Most of that land is in the West, where friction with private landowners and state officials is common and has sometimes erupted into violent clashes with right-wing groups that reject federal jurisdiction.
If Burgum is confirmed, he would face a pending suit in the U.S. Supreme Court in Utah that seeks to assert state power over Interior Department lands. North Dakota’s attorney general supported the lawsuit, but Burgum’s office declined to say whether it supported Utah’s claims.
Lawyers for the U.S. Department of Justice asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to dismiss Utah’s lawsuit. They said Utah agreed in 1894 to give up its rights to the land in question when it became a state.
Trump’s narrow focus on fossil fuels is a repeat of his 2016 campaign — albeit without coal mining, a collapsing industry he failed to revive during his first term. Trump repeatedly hailed oil as “liquid gold” during this year’s election campaign and largely omitted any mention of coal.
About 26 percent of U.S. oil comes from federal lands and offshore waters overseen by Interior. Production continues to reach record levels under President Joe Biden, despite Trump’s claims that the Democrat obstructed drilling.
But industry officials and their Republican allies say volumes could still increase. They want Burgum and the Interior Department to speed up sales of oil and gas from federal lands, in the Gulf of Mexico and off Alaska.
The oil industry also hopes that Trump’s government efficiency initiative, led by billionaire Elon Musk, will significantly reduce environmental assessments.
The Biden administration reduced the frequency and scale of lease sales and restored environmental rules that had been weakened under Trump. The Democrat, as a candidate in 2020, promised new restrictions on drilling to help fight global warming, but he struck a deal for the 2022 climate bill that requires sales of oil and gas offshore gas take place before renewable energy leases can be sold.
“Oil and gas generates billions of dollars in revenue, but you’re not going to get that if you don’t have leasing,” said Erik Milito of the National Ocean Industries Association, which represents offshore industries, notably oil and wind power.
Trump has vowed to kill offshore wind energy projects. But Milito said he hoped that with Burgum in place, it would be “a green light for everything, not just oil and gas.”
Conservation, drilling and grazing
It’s unclear whether Burgum would revive some of the most controversial moves made at the agency during Trump’s first term, including moving top officials out of Washington, D.C., dismantling parts of the Species Act endangered species and reducing the size of two Utah national monuments designated by former President Barack Obama.
Officials under Biden have spent much of the past four years reversing Trump’s measures. They restored Utah monuments and repealed many Trump regulations. Sales of onshore oil and gas leases have plummeted – from more than 1 million acres sold each year under Trump and other previous administrations, to just 91,712 acres (37,115 hectares) sold last year – while that many wind and solar projects were moving forward.
Developing energy leases takes years, and oil companies control millions of acres that remain undeveloped.
Biden’s administration also elevated the importance of conservation in decisions about public lands, adopting a rule putting it more on equal footing with oil and gas development. They proposed removing tracts of land in six states from potential mining in order to protect a troubled bird species, the sage grouse.
North Dakota is among the Republican states that have challenged the Biden administration’s public lands rule. The states said in a June lawsuit that officials acting to prevent climate change have turned laws intended to facilitate development into policies that hinder drilling, livestock grazing and other uses.
Oil production has exploded over the past two decades in North Dakota, largely due to better drilling techniques. Burgum has been a champion of the industry and last year signed the repeal of the state’s oil tax trigger — a price-based tax increase that industry leaders supported.
Burgum’s office declined an interview request.
In a statement after his nomination, Burgum echoed Trump’s call for American “energy dominance” in the global market. The 68-year-old governor also said the Interior post provides an opportunity to improve government relations with developers, tribes, landowners and outdoor enthusiasts “with a focus on maximizing responsible use of our natural resources with environmental stewardship for America’s benefit. people.”
Under current Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the agency has placed greater emphasis on working with tribes, including on their own energy projects. Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe in New Mexico, also launched an initiative to resolve criminal cases involving missing and murdered indigenous people and helped lead a nationwide reckoning on boarding school abuse federal Indians which resulted in a formal public apology from Biden. .
Burgum has worked with tribes in his state, including on oil development. Shannon Straight, director of the Badlands Conservation Alliance in Bismarck, North Dakota, said Burgum was also a big supporter of North Dakota tourism and outdoor activities such as hunting and fishing.
Still, Straight said that hasn’t translated into additional protections for land in the state.
“Theodore Roosevelt had an ethic of conservation, and we talk about it and consider it a beautiful standard to live up to,” he said. “We haven’t seen him on the field as much. … We must recognize that the quality of the landscape depends on a few additional protections.
Burgum was a cheerleader for the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library project in Medora, North Dakota.
Brown reported from Billings, Montana.
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