North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum encourages voters to support Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump during a campaign rally on Jan. 22, 2024, in Laconia, New Hampshire. Burgum is expected to be named secretary of Interior. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
This story originally appeared on North Dakota Monitor.
President-elect Donald Trump said Thursday he plans to name North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum to lead the Department of Interior.
“We’re going to do things with energy and with land, Interior that is going to be incredible,” Trump said during a Thursday event at Mar-a-Lago. A clip of the event was captured on CSPAN.
“I look forward to doing the formal announcement,” Trump said. That announcement is expected Friday.
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Burgum, who has served two terms as governor of North Dakota, was among the field of Republican candidates for president during the primaries before endorsing Trump.
As governor, Burgum has railed against what he sees as government overreach and bureaucracy under the Biden administration, especially on energy policy.
“I’m honored and excited to serve and will have more to say after the official announcement,” Burgum said Thursday in a statement through his spokesman.
The $18 billion Interior Department is responsible for managing public lands, protecting wildlife, maintaining national parks and monuments and overseeing most tribal programs, among other things.
A tension point in recent years has been over how much oil and gas development the department’s Bureau of Land Management should allow. President Joe Biden pledged not to offer new leases for oil and gas producers. Trump, during his first term, sought “energy dominance,” and he and allies campaigned this year on a return to that approach.
North Dakota is the nation’s third largest oil producing state, with some of the production coming from federal lands on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.
North Dakota has filed multiple lawsuits against federal agencies under Burgum’s leadership. A handful of the lawsuits challenge the Department of the Interior, including one against the Bureau of Land Management that seeks to force the agency to hold more oil and gas lease sales.
Burgum, speaking to North Dakota reporters Tuesday, would not comment on a potential Cabinet appointment. But he did speak to the need for a more coordinated approach to national energy policy.
“If any administration wants to change these problems, there needs to be a more coordinated approach at the federal level to energy than what we have right now,” Burgum said after a Tuesday news conference in Bismarck.
Burgum said the Trump administration wants to focus on large-scale changes, not incremental progress.
“They are thinking about significant, substantial change,” Burgum said. “They are thinking about changing the direction of how the federal government works.”
He also said some of the authority given to intervening federal agencies could return to the states.
Burgum, a native of small-town Arthur, North Dakota, made his mark by investing in Great Plains Software, which he later sold to Microsoft. He went on to found real estate development firm Kilbourne Group, which is credited with revitalizing downtown Fargo, before seeking elected office for the first time in 2016.
When Burgum became governor in 2016, he was faced with thousands of demonstrators camping near the Missouri River in North Dakota in support of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to oppose the Dakota Access Pipeline. The pipeline was built to transport crude oil out of North Dakota.
Although Burgum and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe have opposing stances on the pipeline crossing, many credit the governor with improving relationships between the state and the five Native American tribes that share geography with North Dakota.
Mark Fox, chairman of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, told the North Dakota Monitor earlier this year that Burgum would be a valuable ally to the tribes as a Cabinet member.
“There’s so much he could help facilitate,” said Fox, who also supported Burgum’s bid for the presidency.
As governor, Burgum has championed the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library that’s under construction near Theodore Roosevelt National Park in western North Dakota. Burgum has pushed federal officials to address deferred maintenance at the national park.
Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., said Burgum’s love of nature and national parks make him well-suited to lead the Interior Department, one of the largest landowners in the world.
“He loves the land. He loves riding horseback. He loves hiking,” Cramer told the North Dakota Monitor. “It’s really a great fit for Doug and he’ll do a great job for all of us, and he’ll do North Dakota proud.”
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