While the president-elect celebrated Burgum’s record on oil and gas, the
governor would have a wide range of responsibilities as Interior Secretary..

Four Things to Know about
Trump’s Interior Secretary Pick
Heather Richards, Scott Streater, Jennifer Yachnin, Hannah Northey / E&E News

(November 15, 2024) — North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum is expected to implement President-elect Donald Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” ethos on public lands and waters if confirmed to helm the massive Interior Department.

But the self-styled CEO of North Dakota, who Trump revealed Thursday night he would nominate as Interior secretary, would have a role much broader than advancing drilling for oil. As head of Interior, he would oversee the fate of mining operations, work with Native American tribes, preside over the National Park System, juggle conservation efforts and help determine the fate of renewable energy across public lands.

Burgum is expected to lean heavily on his lessons learned from serving as governor of North Dakota, an oil-rich state with a large Native American population. He had never served in public office when elected governor in 2016, after building a fortune as a software executive. He sold his company Great Plains Software to Microsoft for more than $1 billion in 2001.

Burgum, a Republican who unsuccessfully ran for president in 2023, has made no secret of his hostility to federal oversight and is expected to be key in implementing the Trump administration’s efforts to shrink federal agencies and slash regulations.

“We are going to do things with energy and with land … that is going to be incredible,” Trump said Thursday night while announcing the Burgum pick.

As a Western governor, Burgum in many ways is a traditional choice for the Interior Department, the largest landowner in the West, especially compared to Trump’s more unexpected picks this week, such as tapping bomb-throwing former Rep. Matt Gaetz as his attorney general nominee.

One North Dakota Democrat who worked with Burgum said he brings a collaborative style to the job.

Democratic state Rep. Josh Boschee said the governor learned on the job when he took office in 2016 and adapted to not being able to run the state government like he would a private enterprise.

Burgum figured out he needed to build buy-in for policy priorities through relationships with state lawmakers and coalitions. The governor did build those ties, Boschee recalled.

“He’s a very creative, very curious, very innovative person,” Boschee said. “We worked well together because it was about trying to find solutions, whether we agreed on the path or not.”

But Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.), ranking member on the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, blasted the pick, pointing to Burgum’s close ties to the oil and gas sector and ethics issues that came up during his governorship.

Burgum was criticized in 2018 for accepting Super Bowl tickets that were paid for by Xcel Energy, a utility firm. The governor later paid back the company, saying he wanted ‘’to eliminate even the perception of any conflict.‘’

“It is shocking that somebody who has oil and gas leases on their own lands, who’s already been investigated for ethics violations as a governor, who engaged directly in a billion dollar pay-to-play scheme with oil and gas executives, would be considered to lead the agency that manages oil and gas,” Stansbury said in an interview, alluding to reporting that Trump at a meeting with oil executives earlier this year exhorted them to make $1 billion in political donations in return for his pro-oil policies. Burgum reportedly was at the meeting.

“I think he will be highly effective in dismantling the protections that we have to protect our lands and our people,” she said.

Burgum’s approach to conservation and renewable energy on public lands is less clear.

The Trump administration — and Interior — could bring an “all of the above” strategy toward public lands that allows continued renewable development or focus more directly on fossil fuels.

Less than 4 percent of North Dakota’s more than 44 million acres is federal land, in contrast to other Western states that have produced Interior secretaries. More than 30 percent of New Mexico, where current Interior Secretary Deb Haaland is from, is made up of federal land.

But Burgum has made at least one project near federal land a priority. He has been a champion of the construction of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in the small town of Medora, next to the national park that bears his name. Burgum, who has committed $50 million in state revenue to the project, has underscored the Republican conservationist’s passion for the North Dakota Badlands.

Here are four things to know about the North Dakota governor:

Working with Tribes and Some Democrats
Boschee said Burgum has built respectful relationships with North Dakota tribes and expected he would continue Haaland’s legacy. Haaland is the first Native American to helm the department and has emphasized improving cooperation between Interior and tribes since her confirmation in 2021.

“From his first day as governor, he worked extensively to build an ever-respectful relationship with the five tribal nations that share borders within North Dakota” Boschee said.

North Dakota is home to five Native American reservations for federally recognized tribes, including Standing Rock and Fort Berthold There are approximately 30,000 Native Americans living in North Dakota, making up about 5 percent of the state’s population.

Last year, Burgum held a tribal summit and has been recognized for work to incorporate the Indian Child Welfare Act into state law when the federal statute was being challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Boschee said his main concern about Burgum’s potential Interior leadership is that he would be implementing the Trump administration’s agenda on public lands, which could conflict with conservation land, sacred sites, national parks and other protected areas.

While Boschee praised the Burgum’s governing style, not all state Democrats offered praise for the governor after Trump made his nomination public.

“After a year of campaigning with Trump to get a secretary of State or Energy posting, we hope Burgum feels his bootlicking was worth it. He wanted to be part of this clown show, and he got it,” said Cheryl Biller, executive director of the North Dakota Democratic Non-Partisan League Party, the state’s Democratic Party.

Renewable Energy, Too?
Burgum was still a relatively new governor in 2017 when North Dakota was in the midst of a major surge in wind energy development, with production doubling between 2015 and 2023.

Today, wind power provides more than a third of the state’s electricity. Burgum’s office in 2021 set a goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2030, mostly through carbon capture and storage of emissions from oil and natural gas and coal operations, which dominate the state’s energy production, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Renewable energy, including biofuels, accounts for 4 percent of the state’s energy production, according to EIS statistics.

Casey Hammond, Interior’s principal deputy assistant secretary for land and minerals management during Trump’s first term, dismisses the notion that Trump 2.0 will doom green energy. It just won’t be the top priority, he said.

Hammond called Burgum “a fearless advocate for abundant and affordable energy, articulating a vision for the future that will inspire the department to achieve the President’s goals.”

The key is whether the “president’s goals” include green energy.

Burgum, as part of Trump’s efforts to increase oil and gas production, could dismantle BLM’s renewable energy coordinating offices set up by the Biden administration to speed permitting of renewable energy project applications.

Trump did this during his first term with similar permitting offices established during the Obama administration, transferring those staffers to other positions address oil and gas drilling. That would essentially pause — or at least slow down — the 40 solar, wind and geothermal projects under formal review by the Bureau of Land Management.

Others in North Dakota say Burgum could prove open to renewables.

Boschee, the North Dakota state senator, said Burgum has advanced an “all-of-the-above” approach to energy in North Dakota.

David Day, a fourth-generation rancher in Burleigh County, North Dakota, about 20 miles southeast of the state capital of Bismarck, had hoped to build a massive wind farm on his property. Although the project never got off the ground, Day said he saw the governor as neutral on wind power.

“I don’t think he was for it or against it,” he recalled in a telephone interview. “He seemed to want to strike a balance between wind and coal and gas, which I also support.”

An Ally for the Mining, Coal Sector
Burgum is seen as an ally among companies and state leaders eager to boost extraction of coal and critical minerals.

“He recognizes that affordable and reliable energy along with American mineral production are critical to growing our nation’s economy,” said Rich Nolan, president and CEO of the National Mining Association.

Alaska Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who’s angling to advance mining projects in his state — from the Ambler mining road to the Pebble mine — applauded Burgum’s selection in a statement on X as invaluable for pushing Trump’s agenda for more oil, gas, coal, critical minerals and rare earths.

As governor, Burgum welcomed federal funding under the Biden administration for one key mining related project — Talon’s nickel processing plant to his state, which received a $114 million cost-share grant tied to the bipartisan infrastructure law. At the time, Burgum hailed the project as a way to bolster production of nickel and other battery minerals and reduce reliance on foreign sources.

Todd Malan, Talon’s chief external affairs officer, credited the governor for running a “strategic economic development operation” that led to the company opting to build in North Dakota after looking at more than a dozen other sites.

Patrick Donnelly, the Great Basin director for the Center for Biological Diversity, which has fought mining projects in the West, said he expected the North Dakota governor to continue to approve mining projects, including those like the Talon project that are related to the energy transition.

“Burgum does have a strong track record of being pro-extraction, and we can expect that to extend to mining and minerals,” said Donnelly.

Burgum has also been an advocate for the coal sector. During a 2017 address to the Lignite Energy Council, the governor praised the state’s lignite coal mining and fossil power plant executives for producing “some of the most reliable and cheapest electricity in the country.”

At the time, Burgum took an interest in developing carbon-capture technology. He also suggested that coal severance taxes could be used to advance research and development of “clean coal.”

In remarks to the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference in 2021, Burgum would issue a carbon-neutral challenge for North Dakota with a 2030 deadline. The proposal is based largely on burying the carbon dioxide underground, a key component of the EPA’s proposed rule to slash power plant carbon emissions.

Not Much Conservation Experience,
At Least with Federal Lands

While Burgum could soon helm an agency with outsize influence across Western states — where it claims vast swaths of lands in places like Utah and Nevada — he can’t claim significant experience on that front in his own state.

The largest portion of federal lands in North Dakota, more than 1.1 million acres, falls under management of the Agriculture Department’s Forest Service. Another 489,000 acres are managed by the Fish and Wildlife Service, 71,000 acres by the National Park Service and just 58,000 acres under the Bureau of Land Management.

The Center for Western Priorities and other conservation advocacy groups questioned whether that means Burgum will be qualified to oversee management of nearly 20 percent of the nation’s public lands.

“Running the Interior Department requires someone who can find balance between recreation, conservation, hunting, ranching, mining, and — yes — oil drilling,” CWP Executive Director Jennifer Rokala said in a statement. “If Doug Burgum tries to turn America’s public lands into an even bigger cash cow for the oil and gas industry, or tries to shrink America’s parks and national monuments, he’ll quickly discover he’s on the wrong side of history,”

Similarly, Defenders of Wildlife Vice President of Government Relations Robert Dewey raised concerns Burgum will favor extractive industries on public lands “threatening vital wildlife habitat and setting back our nation’s climate goals.”

But North Dakota-based advocacy groups suggest that Burgum could be a potential advocate for wildlife policies, pointing to his performance as governor on issues like chronic wasting disease.

“I’ll give Doug Burgum real credit as governor, really empowering the North Dakota Game and Fish Department to lead on the wildlife policies,” said John Bradley, executive director of the North Dakota Wildlife Federation.

Bradley said his organization is hopeful that Burgum will “put in people who have dedicated their careers — as wildlife professionals, land management professionals — and really empower them to do their job like he did at the state level.”

He also praised Burgum’s understanding that wildlife and public lands — including activities like mule deer and grouse hunting as well as national park visits — could serve as an economic boon to North Dakota.

“We would look for him to continue that nationwide,” Bradley said. “To see the public lands as a value added to our national heritage, to our outdoor recreation and as a growing economic driver.”

Bradley also suggested that North Dakota’s own lack of federal lands would not be a major hurdle if Burgum is confirmed.

“He has all the tools that are necessary to do the job well. What we would hope is that he brings in those other experts from across the West,” Bradley said.

Reporter Daniel Cusick contributed.