Doug Burgum is poised to be a very busy man.
As the next Interior secretary, who is also the White House’s “energy czar” with a seat on the National Security Council, the Republican governor of North Dakota could take on an outsize role in shaping energy policy under President-elect Donald Trump.
If confirmed by the Senate, Burgum will lead the Interior Department, overseeing 500 million acres of America’s public lands, 700 million acres of underground minerals and a workforce of roughly 70,000 employees.
At the same time, Burgum is also slated to become what some have called an “energy czar” — coordinating other Cabinet secretaries to drive the White House’s energy agenda as the chair of what Trump has dubbed his new “National Energy Council.”
As part of this expanded role, Burgum would sit on the National Security Council, the roundtable of domestic, military and foreign policy experts charged with protecting the nation’s interests at home and abroad.
This could all give Burgum considerable sway over what happens with energy development and regulation. Part of the Trump agenda is clear — produce more oil and more gas. But experts say Burgum could end up overseeing much more, potentially including an overhaul of federal permitting, reducing government regulations and boosting energy infrastructure like power lines.
“The trifecta [of Interior secretary, energy council chair and member of the National Security Council] means that Governor Burgum will have significant authority and influence over U.S. energy policy,” said Janice Schneider, an attorney at Latham & Watkins who served as assistant Interior secretary of land and minerals management during the Obama administration.
“His seat on the National Security Council also signals that energy security and the geopolitical implications of energy are top of mind for the incoming administration,” Schneider said in an email.
Burgum’s many hats also reflect the president-elect’s view that public lands are key as an energy generator, experts said.
“Federal lands reflect the energy policy that the president cares about: resource extraction, infrastructure development,” said Landon Derentz, a senior director at the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center. “There’s a natural fit for an Interior secretary to have maybe a more tangible appreciation of the kind of priorities that the president is synthesizing.”
Burgum’s office referred questions to the Trump transition team, which did not provide a comment for this story.
Potential conflicts of interest
“Czar” roles aren’t unusual at the White House and are popular with Democratic presidents. President Joe Biden has leaned on two senior White House officials to help shepherd his climate change agenda — first John Kerry as special presidential envoy for climate and then John Podesta as the senior adviser to the president for clean energy innovation and implementation. Former President Barack Obama also had several czar-like positions to advance his climate, health and security goals.
There are long-established adviser roles at the White House for domestic and national security. Those issues are well integrated within the national security establishment, but energy policy is “kind of disaggregated, spread out across the agencies,” said Derentz, who was director for energy at the White House National Security Council during the first Trump administration.
“The intent here is one to have a very clear-eyed Trump administration energy policy,” he said of Burgum’s roles, predicting that his council would focus on high oil and gas production, deregulation to boost private industry and related issues like artificial intelligence.
But Burgum could face inherent conflicts of interest while holding the dual job of chair of the new National Energy Council and Interior secretary, said one former senior Obama administration official who worked on energy issues.
“There are inevitably policy issues that cut across a variety of agencies, and so your job (as an energy adviser) is to bring together all the various points of view, and then formulate a recommendation to the president,” said the former official, who was granted anonymity to speak freely on the Obama administration’s organization. “If you also serve and have statutory responsibilities like the Secretary of Interior, how can you be an honest broker?”
Burgum has received resounding support from Republican lawmakers.
“This is spectacular news for North Dakota and our nation,” said Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) in a statement when Burgum was announced. “Governor Burgum’s background in energy and his efforts to support our national parks and monuments will make him an incredible asset to the Trump Administration.”
Congressional Democrats so far have warily assessed Burgum. But he has won points from some observers for having a reputation of being competent and able to work with Democrats on diverse issues.
“Burgum, obviously, is somebody who enjoys the confidence of the incoming president,” said Jon Elkind, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. “He also has a reputation … as a lawmaker, as an elected official, of being very willing to engage with people on both sides of the aisle.”
Gale Norton, who served as Interior secretary under former President George W. Bush, said she has no internal knowledge of how Burgum’s role would be organized. But she said there is a natural crossover between national energy policy and the Interior Department.
“No other agency has that large a role [in energy production],” she said in an email, noting that transmission lines, dams, geothermal projects, and mines for critical minerals can be built on federal lands in addition to fossil and renewable energy projects. “The secretary of the Interior thus has direct and practical information about many federal energy programs.”
Norton said the new National Energy Council — which Trump has said will also include Energy secretary nominee Chris Wright — harkens back to previous efforts to corral energy policy.
For example, Bush convened an energy task force — chaired by then-Vice President Dick Cheney — that included all the Cabinet-level members with a stake in energy issues.
The task force wrote a report of their findings, published in 2001, which was subsequently used as a policy blueprint, which informed the Energy Policy Act of 2005, Norton said. That law authorized clean energy subsidies for wind, boosted nuclear and provided funding for projects to reduce coal emissions, among its many provisions.
Norton recalled that after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon in 2001, national security also became central to all domestic energy discussions, although there was not a formal relationship between Interior and the National Security Council, like has been proposed for Burgum. The consensus of that administration was that the U.S. needed to minimize its reliance on foreign oil to protect national security, she said.
The U.S. has since become the largest producer of oil of any nation in history. Oil and gas from public lands is central to that U.S. dominance — 1 in every 4 barrels of oil produced in the U.S. comes from federal minerals.
Derentz echoed Norton’s confidence that Interior has a natural prominence on broader energy issues, but he said placing Burgum on the National Security Council shows that the reorganization is about more than federal drilling.
“Every NSC is a reflection, to a certain extent, of the priorities and orientations of a given president,” said Elkind, who worked on international energy and climate issues at the Department of Energy during the Obama administration and was a staffer to the National Security Council during the Clinton administration.
Top Cabinet officials are regularly involved in the NSC, including the Energy secretary and Defense secretary, just not the Interior secretary. Kerry — Biden’s climate envoy — also had a seat on the council.
Burgum’s selection signals that Trump believes the North Dakota governor and former software entrepreneur can bring something useful to natural security discussions, Elkind said.
Elkind also noted that the NSC seat for Interior could represent a massive time sink for staff, from preparing the secretary with briefings on complex issues to handling classified materials.
“There will be a need for infrastructure, including classified communications and so forth, that I would think is in relatively limited supply in the Department of Interior,” he said.
Permitting overhaul
Jason Hill, a former deputy solicitor for energy and mineral resources at Interior, said he believes Burgum’s combined mission is tied to the government downsizing efforts and permitting overhauls Trump has championed. Hill, now an attorney with Holland & Knight, said there will likely be an effort by the energy council to revive the first Trump administration’s efforts to streamline permitting.
For example, the administration is expected to enforce page limits on federal environmental reviews. The shorter length is meant to make it possible for federal officials to review projects within one to two years — a time limit the first Trump administration imposed.
Critics of the rapid-fire National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process during Trump’s first administration said it’s impossible to do a thorough review and include required public input within those tight timelines. Supporters counter that NEPA reviews are repetitive and lack a strong enough mandate for swift review.
The former Obama administration official said the Trump administration’s thrust to cut regulations could have an unintended benefit of growing the electricity grid for decarbonization.
The nation’s aging infrastructure needs to at minimum double by 2050 to decarbonize, according to the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory. But clean energy and transmission projects are often delayed and costly due to lengthy permitting timelines.
But the official said this will be offset by Trump’s focus on building up fossil fuel energy infrastructure to entrench oil and gas development for years to come.
