North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, pictured at a campaign rally early this month in Michigan, would play a key role in pushing President-leect Donald Trump’s agenda to increase oil, gas and coal production on public lands if he is confirmed as secretary of the Interior Department.
Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP / Getty Images
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Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP / Getty Images
President-elect Donald Trump said Thursday night that he will nominate North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum to be secretary of the Department of Interior.
“He’s going to head the Department of Interior, and it’s going to be fantastic, Trump said in a speech during an America First Policy Institute dinner at his Mar a Lago resort. He said there will be a formal announcement on Friday.
“We’re going to do things with energy and with land interior that is going to be incredible,” Trump said.
As secretary, Burgum will play a key role in pushing Trump’s agenda to increase oil, gas and coal production on public lands.
Interior is a sprawling department responsible for managing 20% of U.S. surface land, as well as federally owned mineral rights. This gives Interior control over nearly a quarter of all energy development in America, on- and off-shore.
Interior is also in charge of U.S. national parks, monuments and wildlife refuges. It also oversees relations with 566 federally recognized Native American tribes, including Alaska Natives, Hawaii Natives and affiliated Island Communities.
Burgum was elected governor in 2016 on a campaign focused on anti-establishment politics. Before that, he led a software company that he sold to Microsoft for $1.1 billion in stock in the early 2000s.
Leveraging his other entrepreneurial success in his real estate development firm and software venture capital group, Burgum ran a largely self-funded campaign in the 2024 Republican presidential primary and focused on energy and taxes before dropping out of the race last December. He then became a vocal supporter of Trump and hosted fundraising events for him while being shortlisted for the Republican vice presidential nomination.
Restoring and expanding fossil fuel energy development should be priority one at Interior in the coming Trump term, former Interior official William Perry Pendley wrote in Project 2025, a blueprint for the new administration published by the Heritage Foundation.
As part of its climate protection agenda, the Biden administration rolled back energy development policies Interior put in place during the first Trump administration. Emissions from burning and extracting fossil fuels from public lands and waters account for about a quarter of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Trump’s previous Interior secretaries became embroiled in ethics scandals. He dismissed his first, Ryan Zinke, a Republican congressman from Montana, after 21 months as Zinke was facing multiple ethics investigations. An investigation by Interior’s inspector general found Zinke misused his position to advance a development project in his Montana hometown.
Trump then elevated former oil industry lobbyist and Deputy Interior Secretary David Bernhardt to the top of the agency. Nine months after his appointment the Government Accountability Office found that Bernhardt had twice violated the law at Interior, when he directed the National Park Service to use park entrance fees for maintenance to keep parks open during the 2019 government shutdown.
Burgum will be a sharp departure from current Secretary Deb Haaland, who implemented a pause on leasing federal lands and waters for energy development. America’s first-ever indigenous cabinet secretary, Haaland also signed off on the new policy of leasing public lands to conserve their natural properties, and drew tribal leaders into Interior decision making.
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