The Senate has voted to confirm former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum to serve as Interior Secretary in President Donald Trump's administration.
The final vote was 79-18.
Burgum will head the department responsible for managing federal lands and offshore resources. Its sub-agencies include the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Land Management.
Burgum, a Republican and a software entrepreneur with a net worth believed to be more than a billion dollars, was governor of North Dakota for two terms. In 2023 he briefly campaigned for the 2024 presidential nomination, but he ended his campaign in December of that year to work with the Trump campaign as an energy policy advisor.
Burgum is expected to work to deliver on President Trump's goals of extracting more fossil fuels.
At his confirmation hearing, Burgum repeated promotion of the development of oil and gas industry on U.S. lands. He advocated for more baseline power generation from coal and nuclear sources and cast doubt on the reliability of renewable energy sources.
He has promoted carbon capture and storage as a method to counter greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels. The nascent technology currently captures less than 1% of carbon dioxide emissions nationwide.
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President Trump says Burgum will also serve as chairman of a newly formed National Energy Council, which will bring together all the government agencies that regulate energy production and distribution.
"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," Trump said.
