President-elect Donald J. Trump announced on November 15, 2026, the nomination of North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum as Secretary of the Interior and appointed him chairman of a newly established White House National Energy Council; Burgum will hold a designated seat on the National Security Council. The Department of the Interior administers more than 500 million acres of federal public lands and roughly 1.7 billion acres of offshore continental mineral rights. The newly chartered National Energy Council is an interagency coordination body uniting leaders from federal executive departments involved in commercial energy production, transportation, and regulatory permitting; its mandate focuses on dismantling regulatory hurdles, accelerating infrastructure authorizations, and expanding domestic production across oil, natural gas, nuclear power, and strategic critical minerals.
At Mar-a-Lago, in remarks documented by the Associated Press and PBS NewsHour, Trump stated: "Doug Burgum will lead the newly formed National Energy Council, coordinating all forms of American energy production and cutting red tape to make our nation energy independent and dominant."
During the Biden administration, federal leasing protocols restricted new onshore oil and gas auctions, raised federal royalty rates, and directed primary permitting resources toward utility-scale solar arrays on public deserts and commercial wind lease developments across Atlantic coastal waters; the incoming administration intends to reinstate regular quarterly onshore oil and gas lease sales, rescind drilling moratoria across designated public domains, and compress statutory review timelines conducted under the National Environmental Policy Act. As governor of North Dakota—the nation’s third-largest oil-producing state—Burgum managed the development of the Bakken shale formation alongside regional carbon capture and storage initiatives.
Environmental advocacy organizations including Earthjustice and the Natural Resources Defense Council issued joint statements challenging the policy directives and argued that expanding fossil leasing on public lands impairs biodiversity protections, pledging federal court litigation to enforce statutory environmental reviews.
