Burgum Will Be Trump’s Energy Czar

Burgum Will Be Trump’s Energy Czar

The North Dakota governor, who helped strengthen ties between the oil industry and President-elect Donald J. Trump, will do double duty as Interior secretary.

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By Coral Davenport

President-elect Donald J. Trump said Friday that Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, his pick to run the Interior Department, will also serve as the administration’s point person to coordinate energy policy across the federal government.

In that role, Mr. Burgum will be charged with executing Mr. Trump’s vision of a government that drives up fossil fuel production while it demolishes environmental regulations.

Mr. Burgum will be “chairman of the newly formed, and very important, National Energy Council,” Mr. Trump wrote in a statement, “which will consist of all departments and agencies involved in the permitting, production, generation, distribution, regulation, transportation, of ALL forms of American energy.”

“This council will oversee the path to U.S. ENERGY DOMINANCE by cutting red tape, enhancing private sector investments across all sectors of the Economy, and by focusing on INNOVATION over longstanding, but totally unnecessary, regulation,” he wrote.

Mr. Burgum will also have a seat on the White House Security Council, Mr. Trump wrote, given the significant role of energy in foreign policy.

The position was inspired by President Barack Obama and President Biden, Democrats who created White House “climate czars,” said people close to Mr. Trump’s transition team, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Those climate advisers drove a “whole-of-government” approach to ensure that all federal agencies advanced efforts to reduce the nation’s use of planet-warming coal, oil and gas and to accelerate the use of wind and solar power and electric vehicles.

Mr. Trump’s energy czar is expected to have similar authorities — but effectively the opposite mandate.

“The White House should have someone who oversees energy policy because it cuts across almost all federal agencies,” said Thomas J. Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, a conservative research group focused on energy that helped shape Mr. Trump’s first-term energy agenda. “Obama and Biden set a lot of precedents. It’s an effective model.”

John Podesta, the current White House climate czar, who also briefly served in that role in the Obama administration, chuckled dryly at the compliment.

He said that if Mr. Burgum truly wanted to ensure supplies of affordable electricity, he would seek to retain the Biden administration’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act. The 2022 law pumps more than $370 billion into tax incentives for wind and solar power and electric vehicles.

“The support that we have given on the manufacturing and deployment side has resulted in a boom of clean, affordable electricity generation,” he said.

Mr. Trump’s transition team is already strategizing with Republicans on Capitol Hill about how to undo portions of that law.

The energy czar’s policy directive is reminiscent of the White House Energy Task Force overseen by Vice President Dick Cheney during the George W. Bush administration, aimed at ensuring that fossil fuels would remain the nation’s primary energy for “years down the road” and that the federal government would focus on increasing the supply of fossil fuels, rather than limiting demand.

Scientists have said that the United States and other major economies must stop developing new oil and gas projects to avert the most catastrophic effects of global warming. The burning of oil, gas and coal is the main driver of climate change.

The current year is shaping up to be the hottest in recorded history, and researchers say the world is on track for dangerous levels of warming this century.

Mr. Trump has long contended that using government levers to boost extraction and consumption would lower the cost of gasoline and electricity and ripple through the economy to bring down the cost of transportation, housing, food and other commodities.

Most economists say that energy prices are determined by global markets, rather than the actions of the U.S. government.

And it’s questionable how much more oil and gas companies would produce under different policies. The United States is already producing more oil than any other country in history, despite the Biden administration’s climate efforts.

Oil producers are also wary of a glut on the market, which could lower prices and profits.

“I’m less bullish on this than they are,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who directed the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and now runs the American Action Forum, a conservative research organization, of the impact of an energy czar position. “I don’t think we’re going to notice a dramatic impact very quickly.”

Mr. Pyle noted another feature of the White House czar position that is likely to appeal to Mr. Trump: While the work and correspondence of officials in federal agencies are subject to government transparency laws, including Freedom of Information Act requests, the work of White House czars has more legal shields from those requirements.

“There is an advantage that they don’t have to be as transparent,” he said.

Trump Builds His Administration

As his team ramps up the transition process, President-elect Donald Trump says his administration will radically reshape the federal government.

• Health and Human Services: Trump said he would nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy’s vaccine skepticism and unorthodox views about medicine, including about fluoride in water, make public health officials uneasy.
• Immigration: Trump’s plans to expel noncitizens on a mass scale are likely to raise prices on goods and services and lower employment rates for U.S. workers, many economists say.
• Middle East: Trump’s emerging team in the Middle East appears poised to push U.S. foreign policy into even tighter accord with Israel’s far-right government.
• Skirting the Senate: Trump’s demand that Senate Republicans surrender their role in vetting his nominees poses an early test of whether his second term will be more radical than his first.
• Slashing Government: Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have been tapped to lead what Trump called the Department of Government Efficiency, which he said would seek “drastic change.”