Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s first edicts on the job aim to meet an “energy crisis” in the U.S. head-on with more drilling for oil and gas and relaxed regulations that the former governor from North Dakota says could help drive down energy prices.
Burgum signed six secretarial orders Monday that claim to unleash the full energy potential of public lands in Alaska, establish the U.S. as a leader in extracting minerals other than oil and gas — such as critical minerals — and “eliminate harmful, coercive climate policies” from the Biden era. One order also called for the review of public land protections, which some environmental groups suggested could include a reconsideration of national monument boundaries.
The orders echo the flurry of executive actions signed by President Donald Trump in recent weeks. They are the first reveal of how Burgum, who has also been tapped to lead a to-be-formed national energy council, will manage the sprawling Interior Department.
Burgum’s first signatures suggest he is keenly focused on unraveling the legacy of the Biden administration on public lands, from revising offshore oil leasing schedules to rewriting plans to protect the greater sage grouse, a Western bird whose fragmented habitat often overlaps with oil and gas fields.
The orders also reverse a consequential Biden-era legal opinion that mining and other companies are responsible for unintentional deaths to migratory birds.
Some of the orders inked Monday could be challenging for Burgum’s department. A promise to address the nation’s “inadequate energy supply” with more drilling is a tall order. The U.S. is already producing more oil and gas than any country in history, and industry experts say drilling decisions follow higher oil prices rather than White House edicts.
Mallori Miller, the vice president of government relations for the Independent Petroleum Association of America, said the nation’s record oil and gas production is thanks to pro-oil policies from past presidents. But she argued that former President Joe Biden’s slowdown of oil and gas leasing could undermine future energy production.
“There is an energy crisis impending because of the full effect of policies from the Biden Administration that have not yet — but will — come to realization without action,” Miller said in an email.
Several orders from Burgum are bound to ignite pushback from environmental and conservation groups.
Dan Hartinger, senior director of agency policy for the Wilderness Society, panned the orders in a statement Tuesday and accused the administration of “hiding” a review of national monuments in broader energy mandates. Burgum orders his assistant secretaries to “review and, as appropriate, revise all withdrawn lands” but does not mention national monuments by name.
“First impressions don’t get much worse than this,” Hartinger said. “Hiding the ball on a review of national monuments shows the White House and Interior know full well how unpopular these actions are.”
The first Trump administration dramatically shrank the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments — moves later reversed by the Biden administration. The Interior Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the orders’ implications for national monuments.
Burgum said in a statement that his department is embarking on an “exciting chapter” where innovation will “keep the U.S. at the forefront of energy and environmental leadership.”
“We are committed to working collaboratively to unlock America’s full potential in energy dominance and economic development to make life more affordable for every American family while showing the world the power of America’s natural resources and innovation,” he added.
Here’s a closer look at some of Burgum’s actions.
An ‘energy emergency’
One of the orders signed by Burgum on Monday, titled “Addressing the National Energy Emergency,” is an effort to align the Interior Department’s priorities with Trump’s declaration on Jan. 20 of an energy crisis.
The Trump order argued that Biden’s push to rapidly build out renewables like offshore wind and solar weakened the nation’s energy supply — wind and solar accounted for roughly 14 percent of the electricity mix in 2023, according to the Energy Information Administration. Democrats in Congress are attempting to repeal the Trump order, while Burgum aims to implement it across public lands.
Burgum also ordered an agencywide investigation of how to boost domestic energy sources and critical minerals under existing legal authorities and under “emergency” authorities. He asks Interior’s bureaus to review their programs and regulations to identify those that contribute to higher costs for the American people. And he wants his top lieutenants to ensure that “policies relating to the development of energy resources on Federal land do not bias government or private-sector decision making in favor of renewable energy projects as compared to oil, gas, or other mineral resource projects.”
Burgum also ordered his department to slam the brakes on any actions that would implement Biden-era executive orders on climate and environmental justice — a policy area that often seeks to alleviate the burden of pollution on low-income communities that live in industrialized areas — that have since been revoked by Trump. More than two dozen Biden-era rules, legal opinions and orders are flagged for revision or elimination.
A separate order notified Interior bureaus that Biden’s ban on new oil leasing in parts of the Arctic, Pacific and Atlantic oceans has been revoked by the president.
During his first term, Trump attempted to roll back an Obama-era offshore mineral withdrawal but was blocked by a court order that ruled only Congress had that authority.
In “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential,” Burgum revoked a 2021 order from then-Secretary Deb Haaland that halted oil and gas activity in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and he reinstated a mandate from the first Trump administration to rewrite the land and energy management plan for the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska.
One offshore energy advocate said Burgum’s orders send a “powerful message: American energy leadership is back.”
National Ocean Industries Association President Erik Milito said in a statement he “strongly supports” the orders, which include reconsidering the Biden administration’s 2024-2029 offshore oil and gas leasing program that scheduled just three offshore lease sales in five years.
“These actions will align U.S. energy policy with the nation’s current and future needs,” Milito said. “They will enhance energy security, bolster national defense, grow our economy, and keep energy affordable for every household and business, reducing reliance on foreign adversaries.”
Several national environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, said they would fight the Trump administration’s energy agenda.
Public lands rule
Burgum’s “Unleashing American Energy” order sets the stage for the Trump administration to reopen, and potentially significantly revise, the sweeping public lands rule finalized in May that ranks among the Biden administration’s signature policy initiatives.
Interior’s assistant secretaries are directed to develop “action plans” and to suggest “steps that, as appropriate, will be taken to suspend, revise, or rescind” a list of rules and orders, including the public lands rule that seeks to place conservation on par with energy development, grazing and other uses of bureau rangelands.
Because the rule was placed into effect in June, BLM cannot simply revoke it. But it can restart the rulemaking process by opening the rule up for new public comment and an in-depth analysis that ultimately results in a revised rule.
The Conservation and Landscape Health Rule, broadly referred to as the public lands rule, has drawn fierce opposition from congressional Republicans since it was introduced in 2023. Critics have argued the rule violates BLM’s multiple-use mandate, while the bureau has argued it’s needed to protect rangelands under increasing stress from climate warming.
Burgum’s order comes just days after the Justice Department asked for a 60-day pause in two federal lawsuits filed last year by five Western states — including North Dakota, where Burgum was governor when the state joined Idaho and Montana in filing the lawsuit last year — “to allow new administration officials to evaluate the litigation and determine how they wish to proceed.”
BLM last week also indefinitely suspended an advisory panel appointed by Haaland that was designed to help BLM oversee implementation of the rule and had scheduled its first meeting for this month.
“The Public Lands Rule provides a long-overdue framework for putting conservation and recreation on equal footing with fossil fuel development,” said Michael Carroll, BLM campaigns director for the Wilderness Society, in an emailed statement. “This Secretarial Order is another signal that America’s public lands, monuments and wild places are on the chopping block.”
Greater sage grouse
Burgum also wants the action plans to include steps the agency would take to potentially “revise all relevant draft and all finalized resource management plans” involving the greater sage grouse.
The plans cover the management of the iconic bird on nearly 70 million acres of federal lands across 10 Western states.
BLM had been working for nearly three years to finalize updates to the plans to incorporate new science, and better identify and protect core grouse habitat.
But the agency last month, in the final days of the Biden administration, issued records of decision approving updated sage grouse management plans for only Colorado and Oregon, and not for the eight other states covered by the planning process. That leaves the fate of the plans up to the Trump administration.
The reason: BLM’s inability to resolve numerous objections to the plans raised by the governors in at least five of those states during the 60-day consistency review. The Trump BLM appears to be ready to make changes.
Burgum’s direction focuses on the updated plans BLM outlined in a final environmental impact statement issued in November. Those plans were designed as a compromise between more iron-clad regulations implemented by the Obama administration in 2015 and revisions to those regulations made four years later during Trump’s first term.
BLM has been implementing the 2015 Obama-era plans in the wake of that court ruling more than four years ago.
“Americans didn’t vote to have their public lands plundered and wildlife like the magnificent greater sage grouse driven to extinction by frack fields, but that’s what this administration wants to do,” said Randi Spivak, public lands policy director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Burgum and this band of oligarchs don’t seem to think the laws apply to them, so we’re ready to sue the hell out of them to defend our nation’s public lands and wildlife.”
Migratory Bird Treaty Act
The orders include withdrawing a brief March 2021 Interior solicitor’s opinion that declared that the “Department of the Interior’s long-standing interpretation” of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act was that the 1917 law banned both the intentional and the unintentional killing and harming of migratory birds.
By withdrawing the Biden administration’s 2021 opinion, Burgum will revive the reasoning in a contrary 2017 opinion issued in the first Trump administration that limited the law’s reach to intentional acts. “Incidental take,” such as bird deaths that result from wind turbines or transmission lines, was not punishable under the 2017 opinion.
A federal judge in 2020 struck down this constrained interpretation of the MBTA, a complication that underscores the challenge ahead for Burgum and his Interior solicitor. Energy industry representatives have pushed for a permit system that might offer regulatory certainty.
The Biden administration failed after four years to draft a compromise Migratory Bird Treaty Act permit policy. It was a flubbed opportunity that former Fish and Wildlife Service Director Martha Williams called one of her “biggest regrets,” though it may offer lessons for the Trump team.
“It required coordination across the federal government, and I think to be effective it required buy-in and support from industries and others,” Williams said in an interview.
Endangered Species Act
While Burgum can act relatively quickly in withdrawing the Biden administration’s migratory bird solicitor’s opinion, his order to “suspend, revise, or rescind” a set of sweeping Endangered Species Act regulations face a more daunting administrative challenge.
The secretarial order identifies for elimination three ESA regulatory packages set by the Biden administration following extensive reviews that included more than 468,00 public comments.
The Biden-era regulations adopted last April in part reversed ESA rules set in the first Trump administration.
The Biden administration rules, for instance, established a so-called 4(d) presumption that every threatened species will receive the same protections as an endangered species unless otherwise specified. Trump’s team wants more flexibility applied to every threatened species.
In a similar vein, the Biden administration rules now targeted for rescission would keep economics entirely out of the ESA listing process. Trump’s first-term team — and presumably second-term team as well — wanted the potential costs associated with listing to be calculated and presented to the public, even though under the ESA’s statutory language the actual listing decision must be based entirely on science.
