This profile originally appeared on No Corporate Cabinet, where Revolving Door Project helps to track the corporate insiders and top executives who Trump has picked to run the government, at the expense of working families.
Oil Man Tapped for “Energy Czar”
Doug Burgum, the two-term governor of oil-rich North Dakota and former software executive who sold his software company to Microsoft for $1.1 billion in stock in 2001, was tapped by Trump to be Interior secretary and Trump’s “energy czar,” helming a new National Energy Council. If confirmed, Burgum will be a central player implementing Trump’s energy agenda for public lands, weakening environmental safeguards and increasing oil, gas, coal, and mineral extraction on federal lands.
Burgum is one of Trump’s wealthiest cabinet picks, with Forbes estimating his current net worth to be more than $100 million. His 37-page financial disclosure indicates that he owns a substantial amount of commercial real estate and holds significant investments in software, fossil fuels, agriculture, and healthcare—among other industries. His ethics agreement indicates that he plans to sell his holdings in Big Tech firms including Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, and Apple; energy holdings in firms including Enterprise Products Partners, Kinder Morgan, Xcel Energy, Duke Energy, First Solar, ONEOK, Otter Tail, and Targa Resources; and other investments, such as Visa, Verizon, and Adobe within 90 days of his confirmation.
Burgum leases land in North Dakota to Continental Resources and Kodiak Oil and Gas corporation for oil and gas drilling. Burgum has “deep business and personal ties” with Continental Resources CEO Harold Hamm, who made his fortune from fracking in North Dakota’s Bakken formation. Hamm and Burgum courted oil executives to donate to Trump, with Burgum telling executives that Trump would stop the “hostile attack” on fossil fuels. They also collaborated on Trump’s agenda to remove guardrails around dirty energy production and kill the Biden administration’s electric vehicle incentives. Burgum has questioned the reliability of renewable energy, and suggested that the balance of federal subsidies should be tipped in favor of fossil fuels.
Burgum has been a vocal advocate for the fossil fuel industry and its false solutions, including “clean coal,” “carbon capture,” and “enhanced oil recovery.” Clean coal has been long-debunked as an industry fantasy wielded to stave off fossil fuel phase-downs. Carbon capture is favored by the fossil fuel industry as a way to prolong its operations and preserve its reputation, despite being energy-intensive, expensive, and unproven at scale. Carbon capture is also key to “enhanced oil recovery,” which enables more dirty oil and gas production by pumping carbon deep into depleted wells to extract more hydrocarbons.
In his confirmation hearing, Burgum called for the use of “clean coal” to power AI data centers. He has been deemed the “chief evangelist” of carbon capture, and specifically of the controversial Summit Carbon Pipeline in which Hamm’s Continental Resources has invested $250 million, which would transport carbon from ethanol facilities across the Midwest to North Dakota—potentially seizing private land through eminent domain along its route. While Burgum served on North Dakota’s Industrial Commission, which oversees energy regulation, he voted 20 times on issues relevant to oil and gas firms, including Continental Resources, with which he had a financial relationship.
Burgum opposed environmental regulations as governor. He opposed an Interior Department rule requiring fossil fuel companies drilling on federal lands to limit methane leaks, saying it “impose[d] harmful and unnecessary regulations.” He signed a state law exempting coal-fired power plants in North Dakota from paying an estimated $100 million dollars in taxes, while opposing a federal rule that would have required the coal industry to reduce mercury emissions, which cause heart attacks, cancer, and childhood developmental delays. His state also sued the Interior Department for a rule enshrining conservation as “a use on par with other uses of the public lands,” calling this a “radical leap.”
At his confirmation hearing, Burgum said he viewed public lands and natural resources as assets on “America’s balance sheet” that ought to generate more revenue. As the climate crisis continues to wreak havoc on communities and ecosystems across the U.S., we can expect that Burgum will prioritize extractivism and corporate profit over conservation and decarbonization as he heads the agency managing hundreds of millions of acres of public lands and waters.