Doug Burgum, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s alternative to steer the Inside Division, mentioned on Thursday he considered America’s public lands and waters as a part of the nation’s monetary “steadiness sheet,” with probably trillions of {dollars} price of oil, fuel and minerals ready to be extracted beneath the floor.
Mr. Burgum, who served two phrases as governor of North Dakota, insisted that the US was within the midst of an power disaster, whilst it’s producing extra oil than any nation at any time in historical past and is the world’s main exporter of liquefied pure fuel. He mentioned if confirmed he supposed to comprehend Mr. Trump’s imaginative and prescient of “power dominance,” a phrase that’s shorthand for extra fossil gasoline manufacturing, and known as that the “basis of American prosperity.”
Testifying earlier than the Senate Committee on Vitality and Pure Assets, Mr. Burgum additionally assured lawmakers he cared about conservation, however declared that any curbs on power manufacturing posed a nationwide safety menace to the US.
“When power manufacturing is restricted in America it doesn’t cut back demand,” Mr. Burgum mentioned. “It simply shifts productions to nations like Russia and Iran, whose autocratic leaders not don’t care in any respect in regards to the atmosphere, however they use their revenues from power gross sales to fund wars in opposition to us and our allies.”
Democrats tried and did not get Mr. Burgum to decide to supporting the continued improvement of renewable power sources like wind, and none pressed him on how he would tackle local weather change. Emissions from the burning of fossil fuels produced on federal lands and waters account for practically 22 p.c of U.S. greenhouse gases.
“I imagine that local weather change is a world phenomenon, for certain,” Mr. Burgum mentioned when Senator Angus King, an impartial from Maine, requested if he thought-about local weather change an issue.
Republicans expressed reduction that Mr. Burgum would reverse the insurance policies of the Biden administration, which has sought to cut back oil and fuel improvement in addition to mining. In current weeks, the Biden administration has barred drilling in additional than 265 million acres of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, the japanese Gulf of Mexico and the Northern Bering Sea.
Mr. Burgum accused the Biden administration of holding “unpredictable and disruptive” oil and fuel lease gross sales designed to discourage drilling and mentioned that, below the Trump administration, such auctions could be “common, predictable and at a degree that enables us to take care of power manufacturing in our nation.”
And whereas he allowed that a few of the practically 500 million acres of American lands and of the 2 billion acres of offshore waters needs to be protected as a result of they include “treasured stuff,” most is likely to be mined or drilled to assist increase revenues and produce down the nationwide debt.
“The remainder of it, that is America’s steadiness sheet,” mentioned Mr. Burgum, a multimillionaire former Microsoft government.
“If we had been an organization, they might take a look at us and say, ‘Wow, you might be actually proscribing your steadiness sheet,’” he mentioned. Mr. Burgum additionally known as for a federal evaluation to worth the oil, fuel, minerals, timber and different sources in the US and its waters. He mentioned he had spoken with Scott Bessent, Mr. Trump’s decide to steer the Treasury Division, in regards to the thought.
“Understanding that quantity, I believe, is essential,” Mr. Burgum mentioned,
The Inside Division has a funds of about $18 billion and is accountable for managing thousands and thousands of acres of public lands and waters, defending wildlife, sustaining nationwide parks and monuments and overseeing most tribal packages.
Mr. Burgum served two phrases as governor of North Dakota earlier than stepping down in December. If confirmed to steer the Inside Division, he’s anticipated to play a key function in implementing Mr. Trump’s “drill, child, drill” agenda, which incorporates making it simpler for power firms to use pure sources, construct new oil and fuel pipelines and export terminals and finish the event of wind power, which competes with fossil fuels.
On the identical time, Mr. Burgum described himself as somebody who cares about public lands.
Mr. Burgum known as outside recreation “a ardour of mine as somebody who has spent my life as an avid outdoorsman” and famous that, as governor, he created an workplace of outside recreation to protect entry to looking and fishing.
Mr. Burgum pledged to “comply with the legislation” but in addition dismissed a query from Senator Mazie Hirono, Democrat of Hawaii, about whether or not he would comply with orders if Mr. Trump needed to drill in Bears Ears Nationwide Monument in Utah. Mr. Burgum mentioned he “has not heard something about” drilling there.
Mr. Burgum has longstanding ties to grease and fuel executives together with Harold Hamm, the billionaire founding father of Continental Assets, one of many main impartial oil firms within the nation.
Mr. Hamm has been a frequent presence at Mr. Burgum’s political occasions. Mr. Burgum, in flip, has spoken at banquets honoring Mr. Hamm, wrote a glowing blurb for his memoir and likened him in an official tackle to former President Theodore Roosevelt.
Through the election marketing campaign final 12 months, Mr. Burgum, 68, acted as a liaison between Mr. Trump and fossil gasoline executives who poured greater than $75 million into his bid to retake the White Home. Lately bonds between Mr. Burgum and oil executives like Mr. Hamm have grown, in line with public conferences and different paperwork, a few of which had been obtained by Fieldnotes, an oil and fuel analysis group, and supplied to The New York Occasions.
The hyperlinks aren’t solely political. Mr. Burgum’s household leases farmland to Continental Assets and Hess Company, one other oil and fuel exploration firm, to pump oil and fuel, in line with enterprise data and a federal monetary disclosure report first reported by CNBC. Mr. Burgum has made $15,000 to $50,000 in royalties from the lease, the report reveals.
Two nonprofit information organizations, The Dakota Monitor and ProPublica, reported final 12 months that Mr. Burgum had voted some 20 occasions as a member of the state Industrial Fee, which conducts oversight of power regulation, on issues that benefited each Continental and Hess.
Watchdog teams have questioned whether or not Mr. Burgum’s ties to the oil trade pose a battle of curiosity. No lawmakers raised the problem on Thursday.
