Doug Burgum could soon be driving Trump’s ‘drill, baby, drill’ promises on public lands | Trump administration

From everyone Donald Trumpis candidates for the cabinet so far, Doug Burgum has stood out as one of the most conventional.

North Dakota’s billionaire governor — like most picks to lead the Interior Department, the largest landowner in the western U.S. — comes from a western state. He is not a conspiracy theorist, he is not under investigation for sex trafficking. Unlike the president-elect’s choice to lead the Department of Energy, he is not a fracking executive.

“He’s not a lunatic,” said Patrick Donnelly, the Center for Biological Diversity’s great basin director. “He’s not someone who’s totally unfit for the job. But I fear the way his mining plan will play out on public lands.

Over the next four years, Burgum is ready to radical remake the agency that oversees 500 million acres (200 million hectares) of public lands, including national parks and wildlife refuges. A former software executive and one-time climate pragmatist, Burgum is closely connected to oil and gas industry executives.

Burgum led the Trump campaign’s energy policy development. After Trump asked oil executives to direct $1 billion to his campaign, Burgum promised them that Trump would stop Joe Biden’s “attack” on fossil fuels. As Trump makes good on his promise to “drill, baby, drill,” Burgum will oversee the department that fast-tracks those drilling permits.

“Efforts will be made to get every ounce of fuel out of the ground and burn it,” said Daniel R. Patterson, a former environmental specialist with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), a division of the Interior, who filed a whistleblower complaint during the first the Trump administration. “And if we do that, we burn ourselves out.”

Burgum has long had an affinity for Teddy Roosevelt, the US president who created the national park system and championed the outdoors. Roosevelt was from New York, but had a special connection to the Dakotas, seeking solace in the region’s vast deserts.

The 26th president was also known for his Machiavellian political philosophy. “Teddy Roosevelt encouraged America to speak softly and carry a big stick,” Burgum said at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. “Energy dominance will be the big stick that President Trump will carry.”

In addition to running the Interior Department, Trump also tapped Burgum to serve as an “energy czar” overseeing energy policy in the federal government at the head of a new “National Energy Council.”

In essence, he will be a fox guarding the henhouse – able to subvert environmental regulations and increase yields. “We’re going to see a severe reversal, to almost complete hostility to conservation interests,” Patterson said.

With Burgum at the helm of the department, Patterson added, “the direction from DC will be to allow as much resource exploitation as possible. And Home Affairs officials will be asked to go further beyond the bounds of the law.

Burgum’s zeal for mining — and his focus on increasing oil and gas production — could make him more efficient and effective than previous Trump interior secretaries. Trump’s first domestic leader, Ryan Zinke, piled on 18 ethics investigations in less than two years. His deputy, David Bernhardt, was also prosecuted accusations for ethics violations—and was investigated for continuing to work as an oil industry lobbyist even after he joined the administration.

Burgum’s relatively short political career was not without scandals. During his short-lived run for president, he gained attention by offering $20 gift cards to people who would donate $1 to his campaign so he would have enough individual donors to advance to the Republican primary debate. But until recently, Burgum was considered relatively moderate.

Initially, he was known for his bipartisanship and pragmatism. Tribal leaders in North Dakota credit him smoothing thin relations between tribal and state governments, and although he called on the federal government to take faster action to clear out the Dakota Access Pipeline protesters, he advocated for against the use of force after taking over as governor towards the end of the standoff.

He was never a progressive advocate for climate action — but he promoted the same “all of the above” approach to energy that supported the Democratic administration, supporting North Dakota’s powerful oil and gas industry while promoting the development of renewable infrastructure energy. In 2021 he set a goal for North Dakota to stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by 2030 by becoming “carbon neutral” — advocating a plan that preserves the state’s fossil fuel industries while investing in capture and storage technologies of carbon to offset emissions. At the time, environmental groups supported Burgum’s pledge, but noted the impracticality of relying on unproven carbon capture technology instead of transitioning away from fossil fuels.

But in the last year and a half, Burgum has suffered a Mage conversionbecoming one of Donald Trump’s closest advisers on energy policy, coordinating closely with oil industry executives.

At one now scandalous meeting between Trump and oil executives were Burgum and Harold Hamm, the head of Oklahoma-based energy company Continental Resources. The two men are close allies in politics and business.

Hamm has donated to Burgum’s political campaigns ($250,000 for his presidential bid) and helped fund his favorite projects (gives $50 million to fund the Theodore Roosevelt Library in North Carolina). His Continental Resources, which is North Dakota’s largest oil and gas lessor, also leases land from the Burgum family for oil and gas production.

And their friendship blossomed when Hamm, who has become one of Trump’s biggest benefactors and advisers, reportedly helped talk Burgum into Mar-a-Lago. As a profile of Hamm in the industry publication Hart Energy claims: “When Harold Hamm talks about US energy, President-elect Donald Trump listens.”

Burgum and Hamm worked in tandem to shore up support for Trump among industry executives. And in an already scandalous executive meeting where Trump asked for $1 billion in support, Burgum promised that if elected, Trump would “stop a hostile attack on all American energy” on “day one,” according to recording obtained by the Washington Post.

In his dual role as energy czar and interior secretary, environmentalists are bracing for him to gut regulations and speed up permitting in environmentally sensitive regions — further opening Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas exploration or welcoming uranium and coal development in areas bordering the Grand Canyon.

Trump gave Burgum one dictum: drill. Conservationists fear that Burgum is likely to oblige not by sweeping action but by a thousand cuts to environmental rules and regulations, allowing not only oil and gas companies, but also mining companies and other businesses unfettered access to public lands.

“The reality is that the BLM approves everything that comes before them, and that’s true regardless of who’s in the White House,” said the Center for Biological Diversity’s Donnelly. A bigger concern, he said, is how that clearance happens.

“It’s something I’m really afraid of because the effects of the first Trump administration are still very much present in our lives,” he said.

During his first administration, Trump led the repeal of more than 125 environmental regulations, many with the help of the Interior Department, whose secretary will wield enormous power over how environmental regulations are interpreted and enforced.

For example, the BLM created new rules to lift restrictions on methane emissions from oil and gas wells. A U.S. district court eventually found the rule flawed, but a Wyoming court has since struck down Obama-era methane restrictions that preceded Trump’s rule. All along, companies have been allowed to release methane without limits.

Burgum could also help Trump gut the Interior Department by slashing staff at key offices that oversee vast swaths of public land — undermining the department’s ability to monitor public lands and enforce regulations. Career interns may also choose to retire or leave.

“Government officials largely do these jobs because they believe in the public interest,” Patterson said. “If a new political boss comes along and tries to turn the agency into a giant bulldozer to pave the way for moneyed interests, he may not want to be a part of that.”

There were 4,900 fewer employees at the Interior Department at the end of Trump’s first term compared to the beginning. “We know there’s a lot of emphasis and push by the incoming administration on shrinking the size of the federal government, and we’re concerned that the BLM will again be in the crosshairs,” said Robert Dewey, vice president of government relations for the nonprofit group Defenders of Wildlife . “If targeted, it would have an impact on their ability to balance conservation alongside their other goals. And we worry that wildlife will suffer as a consequence.”

The administration has faced several complaints and lawsuits over its rushed or inadequate environmental reviews, including its Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for an oil and gas leasing program in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which environmentalists called “slap”. in 2020 Patterson filed a whistleblowing complaint alleging that the BLM district office ignored requirements in the National Environmental Policy Act, in one case allowing a gold mining operation to create a toxic lake instead of requiring the construction of a more expensive and less polluting wastewater system. Patterson also alleged retaliation and the complaint was ultimately dismissed in a court settlement.

“Right now, one of the things standing in the way between this mining boom, you know, ruining our public lands and driving species to extinction is basic environmental laws,” Donnelly said. “And groups like ours that are willing to stop these things.”

If Burgum and the incoming Trump administration succeed in repealing those laws, he said, it could have ramifications that last beyond the next administration. “This could be extremely damaging going forward,” he said.