- Burgum suggests stronger USGS role to analyze the potential
- Says US public lands hold natural resources worth trillions
Doug Burgum speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland, on Feb. 22.Photographer: Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg
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Interior Secretary Doug Burgum touted a plan for mapping deposits of oil, gas and critical minerals on US federal lands, casting it as an opportunity to catalyze development of the energy resources, reduce dependence on foreign suppliers and pare the nation’s debt.
Burgum highlighted the initiative during a speech Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland as he delivered a sharp critique of Biden-era policies designed to advance emission-free energy and counter climate change.
The Interior Department’s US Geological Survey has long analyzed energy resources on federal lands, including assessments of how much oil and gas could technically be recovered. Burgum’s vision suggests a more muscular role for the agency analyzing the economic potential of a range of mineral development across federal lands, which are set to play a central role in President Donald Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” agenda to unleash American energy resources.
The USGS has “got a job to actually go out and map those resources to find out how many trillions or hundreds of trillions of dollars of assets belong to all of you, the public,” Burgum told the conference. “So we’re going to map, baby, map. And then we’re also going to mine, baby, mine.”
New mineral assessments could be used to entice more support for energy development on federal lands and justify efforts to sell off the government-managed territory. More robust economic analysis of the resource potential also could buttress efforts in Congress to mandate lease sales in the tracts and then use anticipated revenue from those auctions and later mineral development to offset the cost of expanding tax cuts.
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The US has $36.5 trillion in debt but limited knowledge about the value of “America’s assets,” Burgum said.
“But in the Trump administration, we’re going to build that balance sheet, and we have trillions and trillions of dollars worth of natural resources, and we’re going to make sure that we understand that our assets far outexceed the debt that we have.”
Conservative interests have pushed the US to divest public lands. Burgum, who heads the Interior Department and Trump’s new National Energy Dominance Council, was governor of North Dakota when the state backed a lawsuit by Utah seeking the “disposal” of public land.
Environmentalists have raised concerns that a singular focus on the mineral bounty and “assets” under federal lands disregards their other benefits, including conserving wild areas and providing natural places for recreation and tourism that’s also an economic boon.
Burgum’s speech to conservative activists just outside the nation’s capital included sharp attacks on policies by former President Joe Biden that were meant to propel a shift away from fossil fuels and their planet-warming pollution.
Read More: Trump’s Broadside on Wind Power Includes Permitting Freeze
Biden’s efforts to promote “part-time, intermittent and expensive power” from renewable sources amounted to “stealing” taxpayer dollars, raising electricity costs and jeopardizing the grid, in pursuit of “some kind of mythical energy transition,” Burgum said. “The whole plan was crazy.”
— With assistance from Stephanie Lai
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