While the nation’s oil and gas industry and its supporters have applauded new Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s recent orders revoking anti-industry orders by the Biden administration, the new efforts have their critics.
An example is a recent report by Inside Climate News.
National monuments, migratory birds, endangered and threatened species: Some of the nation’s most vulnerable natural resources are in jeopardy after Doug Burgum issued—on his first full day as secretary of the Department of the Interior—a seven-page directive weakening their protections to further fossil fuel development.
President Trump laid the groundwork for Burgum’s order by revoking a dozen of the Biden administration’s executive orders, including those advancing clean energy, climate change mitigation and protections of natural resources.
It’s not unusual for presidents to overturn some of their predecessors’ executive orders, but President Trump’s revocations have been vast and far reaching.
On Monday, Burgum directed his assistant secretaries to ease the way for energy development on federal lands, including by reinstating all energy leases that had been canceled under the Biden administration and offering more parcels of public land for oil and gas drilling, among other pro-fossil fuel actions.
Alan Zibel, research director at Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization, said the Interior Department under Burgum “appears inclined to shrink or sell off public lands to fossil fuel interests and mining companies, while making expansion of renewable energy more difficult. This isn’t technology-neutral ‘energy abundance,’ it’s a blatant giveaway to the fossil fuel interests who were generous benefactors to Trump’s campaign.”
