Trump taps North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum to lead Interior Department

President-elect Donald Trump has tapped North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum to lead the U.S. Department of Interior, which oversees the management of 500 million acres of public lands across the country, controls 700 million acres of subsurface lands and 1.7 billion acres of the outer continental shelf.
Burgum, if confirmed, will replace Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s oversight of the agency.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, posted on X that Burgum is well-suited for the job and will reform the agency.
Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance — a group representing small oil and gas producers in several western states including Utah — said Burgum is the perfect choice.
“The nomination is a clear signal that Trump is serious about reinstituting his energy dominance agenda. Gov. Burgum successfully implemented an energy dominance agenda in North Dakota and is the perfect choice to advance forward President-elect Trump’s agenda on public lands,” she said. ”He’s a very intelligent businessman and politician who will be able to lead the Interior Department in the technical details necessary to get back to responsible energy development on federal lands.”
The Republican Governors Association also praised the pick.
“Gov. Burgum is a strong leader who has a long track record of both preserving our natural heritage while advocating for reforms that would put our natural resources to use here at home,” said the association’s chair Bill Lee, governor of Tennessee.
Burgum, a Stanford University graduate in business administration, was elected North Dakota governor in 2016 and is a former senior vice president at Microsoft.
As head of the Interior, Burgum will jump in a role to manage public lands, a factor that has not been at play in his home state of energy development since only 4% of it is in federal hands.
Center for Western Priorities’s Executive Director Jennifer Rokala predicted Burgum’s lack of experience in a public lands state will likely propel misguided policies.
“Running the Interior department requires someone who can find balance between recreation, conservation, hunting, ranching, mining, and — yes — oil drilling. 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.”
Critics expect Burgum will move quickly to fortify Trump’s position on energy development, opening public lands to new oil and gas exploration and slashing regulations and conservation programs established under the Biden administration.
His state is home to the Bakken formation, which holds one of the largest deposits of natural gas and oil in the United States. The Bakken boom led North Dakota to a second-place spot in the country for its oil production — behind Texas.
At one point, North Dakota’s oil industry was producing one million barrels of oil per day.
But Burgum has not been just a “drill baby drill” leader.
Just a few days ago, the governor announced a $98 million housing initiative to incentivize new construction of housing projects in his home state. The nuts and bolts of the plan would provide low interest construction loans for projects relating to entry-level homes and aging-in-place home designs within established neighborhoods. Within that funding, $10 million would go to combat homelessness.
Burgum’s selection came late Thursday evening from Trump at a social gathering at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in West Palm Beach, Florida.