President-elect Trump has chosen North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R) to lead the Interior Department, which manages the nation’s public lands and waters.
Here are six things to know about him:
He’ll be tasked with carrying out Trump’s promise to ‘drill baby drill’
If confirmed, Burgum is poised to oversee an agency whose portfolio includes both onshore and offshore drilling.
Given Trump’s frequent campaign pledge to “drill baby drill” and Burgum’s own promises of “unleashing American energy dominance,” he’s likely to open up many more opportunities to drill in public lands and offshore — though it will be up to privately owned companies whether they want to seize those opportunities.
Burgum hails from a state that has the third-highest oil production and seventh-highest coal production in the nation, and he is expected to champion these energy sources in his role at Interior.
During the campaign, Burgum also served as a liaison between Trump and oil billionaires who he hoped would contribute to his campaign, according to The New York Times.
He supports climate action — but not reducing the use of fossil fuels
As governor of North Dakota, Burgum set a goal in 2021 for the state to reach net-zero emissions by 2030 — an unusual move for a Republican leader in a red state.
However, his plan to meet that target did not include a transition away from fossil fuels, the main driver of climate change.
Instead, Burgum said he wanted the state to use carbon capture and storage technology, which can prevent planet-warming emissions from entering the atmosphere, to reduce or offset its emissions.
The oil and gas industry has touted carbon capture as a way to lower emissions while continuing to extract and burn fossil fuels, and the technology has been embraced by a number of Republicans and received financial support from the Biden administration.
But carbon capture is not currently widely employed by the power sector and some in the environmental movement are skeptical about it, questioning whether it will actually be able to deliver the emissions reductions it promises and raising concerns about safety related to the pipeline infrastructure used to transport the captured carbon.
He was under consideration to be Trump’s vice presidential pick
Burgum ran his own longshot bid for the Republican nomination this cycle before dropping out of the race late last year. After that he endorsed Trump and began appearing with him at campaign events.
He was on the short list of contenders to be Trump’s running mate before the role ultimately went to Ohio Sen. JD Vance (R).
Like Vance, Burgum went to New York to support Trump during his hush money trial. He later said that the verdict — in which Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts over the falsification of business records to conceal alleged affairs during his 2016 campaign — “does not give me pause” and that “it’s … very tough to get a fair trial for Donald Trump in New York.”
He’s a former tech and finance executive
Before entering the political sphere, Burgum made his name and fortune in the technology world. He led the company Great Plains Software, which was eventually acquired by Microsoft.
After that, he served as a senior vice president at Microsoft, working on global business applications software.
He also founded a real estate development firm and a venture capital firm that invests in software companies.
He’s poised to oversee large swaths of the West
The Interior Department has a broad mandate that goes beyond fossil fuels. The department is also in charge of millions of acres of federal lands, largely located in the U.S. West.
It makes decisions about how those lands are managed, which includes decisions about not only whether energy should be produced there but also whether other activities like hunting and livestock grazing should take place. The department is also in charge of national parks and monuments, as well as ocean energy and conservation.
In addition, Interior includes the Fish and Wildlife Service, which makes decisions about whether to protect species and their habitats from development. And it houses the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which interfaces with tribal communities around the nation.
He’s one of Trump’s least controversial nominees
Burgum is expected to be a relatively noncontroversial pick.
In the days before it became clear that Trump would select Burgum, he announced that polarizing figures including former Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would serve in prominent roles.
Burgum has neither the level of national recognition nor the history of inflammatory comments or scandals that plague some of Trump’s other nominees.
Nevertheless, several mainstream and left-wing environmental groups have expressed opposition to his nomination, saying he is likely to harm the environment.
“Burgum will be a disastrous Secretary of the Interior who’ll sacrifice our public lands and endangered wildlife on the altar of the fossil fuel industry’s profits,” Kierán Suckling, executive director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a written statement. “Burgum is an oligarch completely out of touch with the overwhelming majority of Americans who cherish our natural heritage and don’t want our parks, wildlife refuges and other special places carved up and destroyed.”
However, another environmental organization, the National Wildlife Federation, was more optimistic.
“Governor Doug Burgum has often been a strong advocate for science-driven wildlife management, conservation of wildlife habitat, promotion of the outdoor recreation economy, and reductions in pollution through commonsense carbon management and appropriately-sited clean energy,” Collin O’Mara, the group’s president and CEO, said in a written statement.
“We hope he will carry these experiences to the Interior Department and provide the type of balanced, farsighted leadership that people and wildlife alike need,” O’Mara added.
