At a high-profile energy industry conference in March, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum denounced steps taken during the Biden administration to conserve federal lands and waters and withdraw them from economic activity to protect ecosystems and nearby communities. “Was that a theft of trillions of dollars from you, your kids, your grandkids and every American?” Burgum asked. Under President Donald Trump, he said, “we recognize these are assets.”
A month later in a video conference with Interior staff, Burgum declared “We have the world’s largest balance sheet, but last year the revenue we pulled in was about $18 billion and it may seem like a big number. It’s not a big number if we are managing $100 trillion in assets, which we may be. A 1 percent return for the American public … a 1 percent return on $100 trillion is 50 times the revenue we’re bringing now.”
To that end, Secretary Burgum has written a new Strategic Plan for Interior that calls for increasing development of “clean coal, oil, and gas” with “faster and easier permitting.” He is also pushing for expanded mineral extraction, livestock grazing, and logging on federal lands. The plan’s name says it all: “Restore American Prosperity.”
Yet, Burgum’s goal of a trillion-dollar annual return from federal lands appears to be a political pipe dream rather than a serious business plan.
Take energy, for example. Federal energy revenues from all sources for FY2024 totaled $16.4 billion, only a small fraction of the $800 billion interest paid that year in servicing the federal debt. Meanwhile, Trump wants to roll back higher oil and gas royalty rates contained in Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, the first time those royalty rates had been raised since 1920.
Or consider minerals. Despite a new drive for strategic minerals, hardrock mining on federal lands is still governed by the General Mining Law of 1872 which grants free access to minerals with no royalty payment required.
In addition, Burgum has again set the federal grazing fee at the statutory minimum, a rate that does not come close to covering the cost of administering the current program, let alone the costs of expanded livestock operations.
What business generates a profit by selling its assets below cost or giving them away for free?
Another “key strategy” from Burgum is to “right size” national monuments. His plan also calls for turning over “heritage lands and sites to states.” In addition, Trump’s proposed FY 2026 budget would have transferred an unknown number, but as many as 300, of the 433 national park units to the states. At the same time, Trump has supported plans to
The Trump administration has offered no revenue estimates for any of these divestiture schemes, nor is it clear how much money they will save federal taxpayers. However, the logic of liquidating assets does not appear to be a coherent profit generation strategy.
To streamline approvals for these changes, the Trump administration is moving to rescind all regulations implementing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), leaving it up to each agency to write its own rules. As a result, Interior plans to limit environmental reviews of energy projects on public lands to a maximum of 28 days.
These moves are designed to prevent any serious inquiry into the consequences of these actions – the very purpose of NEPA review. Moreover, inadequate NEPA reviews will leave many of these projects vulnerable to lawsuits, an avenue through which PEER and other conservation groups have enjoyed considerable success.
Doug Burgum claims to be a great admirer of Teddy Roosevelt, the godfather of much of our system of federal lands. More than a century ago, Roosevelt said:
“We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources. But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas are exhausted, when the soils have still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers, denuding the fields and obstructing navigation.”
Unfortunately, we have entered an era when such serious inquiries are suspended.
Jeff Ruch is the former Executive Director and Pacific Director of PEER. He now serves as Of Counsel.
