How oil ‘wildcatters’ ended up in charge of Donald Trump’s energy policy

As Donald Trump sat in his Mar-a-Lago resort on election night, two of American oil’s most influential men were just feet away, toasting his victory: North Dakota governor Doug Burgum and shale magnate Harold Hamm.

They had been stalwarts on the Republican’s campaign for months: Burgum, who had briefly made his own bid for the White House, stumping for Trump at rallies, and Hamm offering advice on energy — and money.

Both had been at a dinner organised by Hamm and attended by top US oil executives in April, when Trump asked for $1bn in donations, promising to gut President Joe Biden’s climate agenda if he won back the White House. 

Their loyalty has paid off.

On Friday, Trump named Burgum as both his interior secretary and his “energy tsar”, handing him sweeping authority to open federal lands to frackers and deregulate agencies to boost US oil and gas output. On Saturday, the president-elect picked as his energy secretary Chris Wright, a shale executive who had been promoted by Hamm for months.

“I’ve been in this industry a really long time and therefore have a great Rolodex of friends who work in energy. It would be no surprise that I would know some of the best recommendations for cabinet positions to unleash American prosperity again,” Hamm told the Financial Times. 

Top of the new administration’s agenda are plans to withdraw the US, again, from the Paris climate agreement, allow drillers into Alaska’s wildlife reserves and unleash fossil fuels, say people with knowledge of the plans.

The pursuit of what Trump calls “energy dominance” would make the US, already the world’s biggest oil and gas producer, a powerful rival to Russia, Saudi Arabia and the other big crude exporters in the Opec+ cartel.

Environmental campaigners have slammed Trump’s “shameful” plan to hand power to an industry responsible for a global climate emergency.

But fossil fuel veterans from west Texas to North Dakota are jubilant that oilmen will be shaping Trump’s energy policy — not the climate think-tanks so close to Biden’s administration.

“To say that it’s a breath of fresh air for those of us in the domestic energy business would be an understatement,” said Kirk Edwards, chief executive of Latigo Petroleum, an independent oil producer in Odessa, Texas.

“They understand what we do,” said Steve Pruett, CEO of Elevation Resources, based in neighbouring Midland, and chair of the Independent Petroleum Association of America.

Where Biden had appointed a climate tsar to put the subject at the heart of government-wide decision-making, Burgum’s role will do the same, but for fossil fuels.

Pruett was more blunt. There would be no more “fanaticism around putting climate change as the greatest existential threat known to mankind”, he said. “They’re mature business people that understand the intersection of energy, the economy and the climate.”

The third key appointment for the energy industry is Lee Zeldin, the former New York congressman Trump has picked to run the Environmental Protection Agency.

The agency has been crucial in Biden’s efforts to crack down on methane emissions and other pollutants. All those regulations are now up for grabs as Trump pushes a radical deregulation agenda. Zeldin is little known in the industry, but has been greeted as unlikely to buck that intention.

Trump advisers expect him to execute the agenda swiftly.

Carla Sands, policy adviser at the right-wing America First Policy Institute, said the EPA would be critical in Trump’s move to end Biden’s green policies, including its rules on vehicle emissions and those promoting electric cars.

“They are going to do it through the EPA and the energy department,” said Sands, who was Trump’s ambassador to Denmark when he floated the idea of buying Greenland.

Few people have influenced Trump on energy as much as Hamm, the Continental Resources chief who a decade ago also led efforts to persuade the Obama administration to allow more US oil exports.

Speaking to the FT before the election, Hamm ruled out a job for himself in the administration but said Trump “calls on me for advice and help”. He tipped Burgum and Wright for top jobs. 

At the April Mar-a-Lago dinner, Hamm provided a platform for Wright to speak, catapulting the Colorado-based executive into contention for Trump’s cabinet. 

The oilfield services boss is known for his down-to-earth demeanour, regularly hosting tailgate parties for his Liberty Energy employees at Denver Broncos NFL games and handing out beers well into the night.

Burgum, who made his fortune in software and real estate, has since 2016 been the governor of North Dakota, the state where Hamm’s Continental broke open the Bakken oilfield, unleashing the shale oil revolution.

Burgum’s family still leases 200 acres of land to Continental for oil and gas drilling, a contract first reported by CNBC.

In an interview with the FT at a conference hosted by Hamm in Oklahoma last year, Burgum blasted Biden for “empowering dictators” by “killing” the US’s own oil and gas sector.

Wright, who founded Liberty in 2011, will also sit on Burgum’s new national energy council, where members will hunt for red tape to eliminate and push other agencies to do the same.

David Banks, an energy adviser in Trump’s first administration, said a “wildcatter” mentality was arriving at the centre of US government — at the expense of Big Oil lobby groups more used to Washington power.

“It is not the big trade associations or the large energy multinationals that have the most influence with the Trump administration, rather it’s the smaller companies, the independents in the middle of the country, the wildcatters,” he said.  

Climate campaigners are preparing for four years of activism to blunt the new administration’s agenda — and especially Wright, who has criticised a “myopic focus on climate change” and said “there is no climate crisis”.

Hannah Saggau, senior climate finance campaigner with Stand.earth, said Wright had been “gaslighting” Americans already living with the impact of global warming.

“We need leaders who understand and act on climate science, not wilfully deny it,” she said.