Prospective Trump Energy Czar Would Expand Oil and Gas Leases on Federal Lands, Waters

President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum, testifies before the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on Capitol Hill in Washington on Jan. 16, 2025. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

Interior secretary nominee Doug Burgum told key senators on Jan. 16 that he’d be “aggressive” in opening public lands to oil and gas development in efforts to reverse an “imbalance” in federal leasing policy he said is short-circuiting the nation’s capacity to produce the base-load electricity needed to win “the AI race with China.”

“The thing we’re short of most right now is base load. We need more [energy]. We need an all-of-the-above strategy, but it has to be a balance,” he said during his three-hour nomination hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Burgum said one of the swiftest, least expensive ways to boost base-load electricity would be lifting restrictions on oil and gas leasing across the 500 million acres of public lands and 1.7 billion offshore acres he’d be managing as secretary of the Department of the Interior (DOI) and chair of President-elect Donald Trump’s newly created National Energy Council.

The former two-term North Dakota governor said an estimated $1 trillion in tax credits, low-interest loans, and grant programs subsidizing renewable energy development over the next decade through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act “may have been too successful in that we now have significant investment in projects ... that are intermittent and not consistent” in achieving the base load “affordability and reliability” needed to power a 21st-century economy.

“If you don’t have base-load reliability, you can’t have intermittent” renewable energy development drawing public and private resources away from sustaining the energy infrastructure that’s most needed, such as natural gas pipelines, Burgum said.

“I think the key is President Trump has been very clear in his statements that he’s concerned about the significant amount of tax incentives that have gone toward some forms of energy that have helped exacerbate this imbalance that we’re seeing right now.”

Burgum said the government must maintain “innovation neutrality” in administering an energy policy that is driven by the market, not trying to disrupt the market.

“Two-hundred-thousand gas stations were built without a dime of public money because the market created that,” he said. “When it comes to energy, we need all of the above. We need it all,” including fossil fuels.

Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), noting that wind energy is a growing industry in Maine and provides more than 35 percent of North Dakota’s electricity, said the key to unlocking low-cost renewable energy’s potential is developing storage capacity, in winning the global search for the longer-lasting battery.

“Intermittent plus storage equals base load,” King said. “I don’t want ‘base load’ to become the word for ‘no renewables.’”

“Yes, but right now,” renewable energy comes “at much higher costs” than from sources such as natural gas, Burgum said.

As DOI chief and National Energy Council chair, Burgum will be calculating costs when fashioning energy policy. “If all-of-the-above” consideration includes fossil fuels and proves “cheaper than subsidized renewables, those costs will be looked at” in charting “a better path forward,” he said.

The friendly interview with senators spanned an array of challenges Burgum would face in managing the 70,000-employee DOI and its $18 billion annual budget.

As DOI secretary, he would set policy for 11 agencies and 14 offices, including the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, U.S. Geological Survey, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, and Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement.

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (L), President Donald Trump (2nd L), and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (3rd L) during a meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington on May 13, 2020. Doug Mills/Pool/Getty Images

Waiting for Orders

During the hearing, senators questioned Burgum about federal wildfire policies and resources, Alaska’s North Slope oil and gas development, delisting grizzly bears as endangered species in Wyoming and Montana, relationships with Native American nations and tribes, mining for critical minerals, sustaining the nation’s $2.1 trillion outdoors and recreation economy, and deferred national parks maintenance while querying him about the labyrinth of laws, regulations, and rules that guide—and bedevil—federal land-use management.

Burgum, 68, a wealthy former software executive, was largely unknown beyond North Dakota until he launched his 2024 presidential campaign in June 2023. He dropped out of the GOP primaries and endorsed Trump in December 2023.

He was rumored to be on Trump’s vice president short list after serving two terms as governor of North Dakota, where his “innovation over regulation” policy helped clear the way for the Bakken shale oil boom to drive up oil and gas production, while also drawing significant investments in solar, wind, geothermal, hydrogen, and carbon-capture technologies to the state.

Burgum would not speculate on what, exactly, the National Energy Council will explicitly be tasked to focus on, or on who would be on it. Trump will lay out the specifics in an executive order, he said, so the council’s marching orders will be known then.

It’s mission, however, is already crystal clear.

“I can say we’ll have a land-use and energy policy that will be anchored in national security,” he said.