Net Worth: Over $100 Million (Forbes)
Who is Doug Burgum?
- Doug Burgum holds multiple powerful roles within the Trump administration as Secretary of the Interior, chair of the new National Energy Dominance Council, and member of the National Security Council.
- The National Energy Dominance Council is tasked with coming up with a plan to reduce federal regulation, expedite approvals for dirty energy infrastructure, and increase the extraction of fossil fuels and other resources on public lands.
- Burgum was North Dakota’s two-term governor from 2016-2024, and ran unsuccessfully for president in 2023 with a largely self-financed campaign.
- In a potentially illegal, but certainly unethical, scheme to qualify for the Republican debates, Burgum offered $20 gift cards to the first 50,000 people to donate a dollar or more to his campaign. In the first month, the campaign raised $11.8 million, 87 percent of which was from Burgum himself.
- Prior to serving as governor, Burgum was a multi-millionaire tech executive, venture capitalist, and real estate developer who sold his software company to Microsoft for $1.1 billion in 2001.
- Burgum has longstanding personal and professional ties to the fossil fuel industry, and advocated for weakened regulations and fewer taxes on the coal industry as governor of North Dakota. One of his most prominent ties to the industry is his relationship with billionaire fracking executive Harold Hamm of Continental Resources.
- Hamm made his fortune fracking the Bakken Shale in North Dakota, and collaborated with Governor Burgum before joining forces on Trump’s presidential campaign to solicit donations from oil and gas CEOs and formulate a pro-fossil fuel energy agenda for the administration.
How is Burgum advancing Trump’s pro-corporate, right-wing agenda?
- As Trump’s Secretary of the Interior, Burgum is boosting the exploitation of public lands for mining and fossil fuel extraction. To do so, Burgum has placed national monuments and public lands on the chopping block, with Interior reviewing monument designations, which serve to protect federal lands for historic or scientific reasons, to potentially reduce their size.
- Burgum is also overseeing the exploitation of undeveloped Alaskan lands via oil and gas leases. The administration has opened up 82% of the 23 million-acre National Petroleum Reserve and 1.56 million acres of the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to leasing.
- Burgum also ordered the removal of protections for a swath of federal lands that previously prohibited various aspects of hunting, including certain uses of firearms, cleaning game in restrooms, and tags for hunting dogs, among other protections. The New York Times reported that some parks pushed back against the rule changes, with the New River Gorge National River in West Virginia saying they would not remove restrictions on firearm use near campgrounds and centers as it is a “a basic safety measure.”
- Burgum has spearheaded the administration’s push to increase offshore drilling, reversing a Biden-era policy that protected 625 million acres of federal waters from offshore drilling.
- Burgum also oversaw the merger of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement into the Marine Minerals Administration. In doing so, Burgum flouted the law requiring agencies to provide advance notification to Congressional appropriations and receive approval before “reprogramm[ing]” funding. The two bureaus were previously separated following BP’s 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill that released nearly 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico in order to strengthen oversight of the industry by separating the agency’s development and enforcement arms. Burgu
- The Interior has been instrumental in the administration’s aim to kneecap the renewable energy industry in favor of oil, gas, and coal. Interior has subjected wind and solar to a slew of barriers to entry, including additional permitting reviews by Burgum himself and blocking wind and solar developers from accessing a US Fish and Wildlife Service database that helps navigate and streamline environmental reviews. In April 2026, a District Judge granted a preliminary injunction to block these policies, but they have already significantly delayed renewable projects
- Meanwhile, Burgum has been boosting the coal industry by pushing for the reopening of shuttered coal-fired power plants. Interior has also opened up 13 million acres of federal lands to coal mining and promised $625 million in funding for renovating coal-fired plants.
- Not only is Burgum creating barriers to renewables, his department is paying companies to not build their planned offshore wind farms. Interior has reached deals with three companies for the firms to end their offshore wind leases in exchange for reimbursements on their investments, costing taxpayers a total of nearly $2 billion.
- In all, Trump’s policies, with Burgum at the helm, have caused the loss of nearly 173,000 clean energy jobs and $61 billion in clean energy investments according to a February 2026 report from Climate Power.
- Burgum said he “completely embrac[ed]” DOGE’s firing spree, even as Interior has fired thousands of workers, including those managing water resources in the American West, overseeing offshore drilling and wind turbines, monitoring natural hazards like earthquakes and volcanic activity, and other experts.
- The Interior Department is responsible for implementing Trump’s order to paint the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in DC. Interior awarded a no-bid contract to Atlantic Industrial Coatings, a firm handpicked by the President after they completed work on one of his golf clubs. Just a month into the contract, the cost has ballooned from $1.8 million to $13.1 million as of May 11, 2026.
- Burgum is also presiding over the MAGAfication of the 250th Anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. As ex-officio chair of the National Park Foundation board, Burgum has been at the forefront of Donald Trump’s Christian nationalist takeover of the semiquincentennial via Freedom 250, a financial black box that seems to offer donors direct access to high-level government officials at the same time as it uses our public lands to boast overtly religious messaging and stage advertisements for private companies.
For more information, see the Revolving Door Project’s Oligarchs in Trump World tracker.