By Kelly Sloan | Contributing Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice
There is much consternation in different corners about President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet picks; indeed, some of it is not entirely unwarranted. Much of it, on the other hand, is on the order of polemical hysteria, an outcropping of the left’s general caterwauling about how America under a second Trump presidency will take on the appearance of a Hieronymus Bosch painting.
The Senate may have its work cut out in sorting through the noise generated around some of the appointments, but two that ought to give them no pause in the least are the President-elect’s picks for Interior and Energy: North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, and Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright respectively.
It will prove exceedingly difficult to find legitimate cause for rejecting the confirmation of either of these men that is not based on pure ideological opposition. Both men are highly capable, competent and, above all, realistic in terms of America’s natural resources and what the nation’s approach to keeping the lights on ought to be. Both are expert administrators, and both profoundly believe in the necessity of strong national energy security. They are highly unlikely to be fooled by phony pushes for electric vehicle mandates or the sentimental pretentions of the dogmatic climate lobby.
Gov. Burgum knows a thing or two about the nation’s interior, having successfully governed one of its frontier states, which also happens to be the third-largest oil producing one, and among the top for wind energy generation.
His first and predominant challenge at Interior will be to take bolt cutters to the locks that the Biden Administration has placed on the country’s national resources. In the short term this will mostly consist of reinstating some of the programs initiated in the first Trump term that were shuttered by Biden, such as the opening of oil and gas leases in ANWR, the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge. The relative sliver of land in ANWR that was opened for leasing by the 2017 tax law holds a considerable amount of oil and natural gas, and not much else.
Similarly, the current offshore oil and gas leasing plan put in place by Biden allows for only three – three – lease sales between now and 2029 – as compared to the 40-something that were being planned during Trump’s first administration. That is an awful lot of resource left untapped for no fundamentally sound reason.
In the longer term, overall permitting reform would seem to be in order. But the morass of red tape required to tap America’s national resources on federal land – where even permitted in the first place – is only part of the larger problem. Successful permitting reform will need to include substantive reforms to the litigation system that has been so successfully gamed by the environmental lobby’s legal obstruction machine. Gov. Burgum is well aware of the tactics of the professional obstructionists and is uniquely positioned to reinstitute some legal balance.
Mr. Wright is similarly well-positioned to make some advantageous changes to national energy policy. Like the governor, he understands energy markets, and what is required to keep the nation’s engines running. His first order of business ought to be the reversal of the insane Biden administration prohibition on the export of liquified natural gas. Few policies could as greatly benefit the general welfare of the Republic as permitting LNG exportation; we have more of it than we can use domestically, other countries need it, and they are willing to pay for it. It is among the most powerful strategic cards we have to play: Russia and Iran are financing their aggressions largely through the sale of oil and gas, directly or indirectly, and American dominance of the LNG market, particularly to Europe and the Pacific rim, would do a great deal to undercut that revenue source.
It’s not just about oil and gas; Wright is also an astute businessman who has the wherewithal and cunning to take advantage of the waning resistance among the ideologues to nuclear power, and perhaps finally launch the nuclear renaissance that the left has for so long denied us.
The industrial world’s absolute dependence on energy is illuminated when it becomes scarce. Europe got a taste in the winter following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. For most Americans, memories of energy scarcity are more like memories of the First World War, the OPEC-induced gas lines long forgotten. But the periodic blackouts experienced in California serve as a harbinger. The consequences are not just a lack of power, but the derivative economic and social afflictions which would touch every aspect of modern life, from communication infrastructure to food security and the provision of clean drinking water. Energy policy is a strategic problem, one that has been in the hands of those who fail to view it as such, treating instead as yet another ideological plaything. Reorienting national energy policy along proper strategic lines will require hard political animation of people in Washington who a) understand the implications, b) possess common sense, and c) wield the requisite authority. Messrs. Burgum and Wright meet the first two qualifications, and the incoming Senate has the authority, and the responsibility, to grant them the third.
Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.