Scott Hennen’s interview with Secretary of Interior Doug Burgum
WASHINGTON – Secretary of Interior and former North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum says the Trump Administration continues to unleash American energy.
Burgum says the president’s expectation is for the Interior Department to make America more prosperous and safer. That includes holding auctions to allow companies to bid on doing resource development like mining oil and gas, cutting down trees and grazing permits. Burgum says former President Joe Biden was the first president since Harry Truman to not hold these quarterly auctions and broke the law.
“We’re stripping away all these restrictions, getting back to the purpose when Theodore Roosevelt put away these hundreds of millions of acres of land, they weren’t for the bureaucrats in D.C. They’re literally described as for the benefit and the use of the American people. We can responsibly cut a tree, raise cattle, do oil and gas development, mine for critical minerals as opposed to getting them from our adversaries,” Burgum said.
Another thing Trump has done to aim to help American energy dominance is to create the National Energy Council which Burgum chairs. It includes other cabinet officials like Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin.
“Everybody’s going to be tasked with cutting red tape across all of government undoing the damage that Biden did, unleashing American energy for the benefit of the American public,” Burgum said.
Burgum says the president is also looking into rescinding Biden’s 68 sanctions on Alaskan energy production.
“Biden sanctioned Alaska more than more than he sanctioned Iran. President Trump is exactly the opposite. We’re going to sanction Iran, we’re going to stop the oil flow that’s funding the wars that are fought against us and we’re going to unleash American energy in places like Alaska and North Dakota. We can do this and we can still protect our best places,” Burgum explained.
