President-elect Donald Trump has set Washington, D.C. afire over the past week with a series of controversial picks for cabinet-level offices and other senior advisory positions. The Senate confirmation hearings for nominees like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard are destined to be must-see TV, events Congress could use to help cut the federal deficit by airing in pay-per-view format.
But the nominees whose offices have the biggest impact on energy policy are likely to be among the least controversial announced so far. Those would be former New York Rep. Lee Zeldin to head up the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum to be secretary of the Department of the Interior (DOI). While many would assume the secretary of Energy would be the cabinet position to wield the most power to regulate energy companies, the reality is that these other two positions are far more impactful.
For the oil, gas and coal industries, no part of the federal government possesses greater authority to regulate their business than DOI, which oversees all leasing, mining, drilling and minerals production related to federal lands and waters. The U.S. government is the largest landowner in the country, owning large percentages of the lands in the intermountain West under which some of the biggest domestic reserves of these mineral resources exist. Specific regions of these western states are also prime locations for wind and solar development.
North Dakota is a state rich in mineral reserves and is one of several states in which federal lands are intermingled with state and private landholdings. As governor, Burgum has had to grapple with the same array of permitting, leasing and multiple-use issues he will now be assigned to oversee at DOI. One of his main tasks will be to reinvigorate a federal leasing program that has been held dormant in violation of an array of laws and regulations by current Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a longtime anti-development activist.
At EPA, Zeldin will be faced with the daunting task of bending a massive bureaucracy that has been packed with direct hires from billionaire-funded climate-alarm groups to get with the Trump agenda. One of Zeldin’s immediate major tasks will be to find ways to streamline the agency’s permitting and approval processes.
The slowness of permitting and delegations of authority at the agency have become bottlenecks to progress in meeting some of the carbon reduction goals laid out in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), President Joe Biden’s signature piece of legislation. Barring an unlikely major rewrite or repeal of the IRA, those goals will remain among the priorities that Zeldin will find on his plate when he assumes office next year.
While the common perception of the Trump energy-and-climate agenda focuses on its “drill, baby, drill” aspects, it is key to remember that former President Trump did not abandon U.S. carbon reduction coals in his first term and has not pledged to do that in the second term to come. In fact, U.S. carbon emissions fell significantly across Trump’s previous four years in office.
Both Zeldin and Burgum will also make a high priority of reviewing the massive pile of new regulations put in place by the Biden administration, which total to more new pages published in the Federal Register than any other presidency, and then working to eliminate or modify many of them. This is a daunting task that could prove overwhelming given the inevitable obstruction and pushback by the career bureaucracy within these agencies and departments.
Given the way the Trump overall agenda seems to be shaping up, Zeldin and Burgum will be taking on these administrative tasks simultaneously with Trump’s goals of cutting staff and even moving entire agencies to locations outside of Washington, D.C. They will also have to be managed in conjunction with Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency to be run by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
What it all portends is a period of upheaval and radical change not just at EPA and DOI, but across the entire federal structure. Given that the U.S. system of government was designed by the country’s founders to inhibit radical change, we are in for some interesting times indeed.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
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