PUBLIC RECORDS: Trump Interior Chief’s Ties To Oil Tycoon Run Deep
As North Dakota governor, Doug Burgum forged a tight relationship with fracking mogul Harold Hamm. Now he's spearheading Trump's "Drill, baby, drill" agenda.
In September 2023, then-North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R) moderated a panel discussion on carbon capture at an energy security conference in Oklahoma City, Okla. — a summit organized and hosted by billionaire oil magnate and GOP mega-donor Harold Hamm.
Burgum, who was recently confirmed as President Donald Trump’s interior secretary, opened the discussion by touting it as “the most awesome CO2 panel ever assembled, ever, at any energy conference.” After letting the panelists introduce themselves, Burgum dove into what he described as “hard-hitting, insightful questions.”
Documents that Public Domain obtained through a state public records request show that prior to the conference, Hamm’s staff provided Burgum with a “discussion guide” that included detailed questions for each of the panelists.
“Do you have any talking points and/or a list of questions you’d like him to use to introduce the panelists/subject and get the discussion started?” Mike Nowatski, a spokesperson for the governor, wrote in an email to Amy Blackburn, the communications director at the Hamm Institute of American Energy, a few days before the event.
Lynne Hames, one of Hamm’s advisors at Continental Resources, subsequently forwarded a “discussion guide” with a lengthy list of prepared questions. Burgum put several of those questions to the panelists, massaging them to make them his own.
On that list was a question about the challenges of building pipelines in the United States. Burgum gave it a personal touch, bemoaning the “people that are opposed to, somehow, taking CO2 out of fossil fuels.”
“Isn’t that confusing? You think they would be for that, as opposed to against it,” Burgum said, before asking the three panelists to speak to “misinformation” and “challenges” the carbon capture industry is working to overcome.
Justin Kirchhoff, the CEO of Summit Agriculture Group, which through a subsidiary is working to build the nation’s largest CO2 capture pipeline in the upper Midwest, told Burgum that safety concerns continue to be a major hurdle.
“The reality is there has been 5,000 miles of [CO2] pipeline in the U.S. for, call it, four decades,” he said. “And there’s never been anybody that’s been admitted to the hospital and there’s never been a fatality.”
Carbon capture and storage, or CCS, is a blanket term for advanced technologies that capture planet-warming greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and store them underground. United Nations scientists have warned that removing CO2 from the atmosphere is necessary to avert catastrophic climate change. Many environmental critics, however, argue that the technology is a “false solution” that allows industry to continue developing planet-warming fossil fuels. As much as 73% of the carbon dioxide captured every year is currently used for enhanced oil recovery, a method of injecting CO2 into existing wells to extract otherwise inaccessible oil.
Sitting with Kirchhoff on the panel was Chris Kendall, the CEO of Denbury Inc., which operated a massive network of CO2 pipelines along the Gulf Coast before ExxonMobil acquired the company in late 2023. While it is true that there have been no reported fatalities from a CO2 pipeline accident, Kendall, of all people, knows about the health risks. In February 2020, a Denbury pipeline ruptured near the town of Satartia, Mississippi, resulting in hundreds of evacuations and dozens of area residents being rushed to the hospital for symptoms of CO2 exposure.
Kirchhoff defended his comment about zero hospital admissions, pointing Public Domain to a federal incident report that notes “forty-five people were taken to the hospital” and that “one individual was admitted to the hospital for reasons unrelated to the pipeline failure.” Those figures are what Denbury reported to regulators, the report states.
In other words, the people injured in the Sataria rupture did not meet the threshold for admission and overnight hospitalization, but were instead treated and released.
No one on the panel brought up the mass-poisoning event in Mississippi. Instead, Burgum told a story about being asked if he would ever live next to a CO2 pipeline. He said he would and noted that he lived near a highway most of his life.
“We kill 40,000 people a year on highways. We’ve killed zero in the entire history of CO2 pipelines,” he said. “I think this is a classic thing where misinformation is so strong ... These are all weaponized things to try to basically have a full-on attack, I believe, on liquid fuels, and on fossil fuels in general. So we are fighting a battle.”
Burgum argued that it might be time for industry players to rebrand the term “enhanced oil recovery.”
“If it’s got the word ‘oil’ in it, they’re probably going to be against it. Let your marketing teams work on that,” he told panelist Vicki Hollub, the president and CEO of Occidental Petroleum. “We might need a new acronym.”
A longtime champion of fossil fuels and carbon capture, Burgum has vowed to unleash energy production across the federal estate and prioritize industry innovation over government regulation. His use of the word “we” to describe industry — which he did several times during the panel discussion — likely signals how he will approach the powerful job of interior secretary, where he is responsible for regulating oil and gas sector activities on federal lands and in federal waters.
Burgum also delivered the keynote speech at the energy summit. The Interior Department, Continental Resources and the Hamm Institute did not respond to Public Domain’s requests for comment.
When Burgum appeared before a Senate committee for his confirmation hearing in mid-January, he told lawmakers that he has no known conflicts of interest.
“Are you aware of any personal holdings, investments or interests that could constitute a conflict of interest, or create the appearance of such conflict, should you be confirmed and assume the office to which you’ve been nominated?” asked committee chair Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah).
“No,” Burgum said.
Ethics watchdogs have argued otherwise, pointing to Burgum’s well-documented personal and financial ties to Hamm — a relationship that no one on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee asked about during his confirmation hearing.
The documents Public Domain obtained, some of which the Associated Press first reported on, detail Burgum’s tight relationship with Hamm during his tenure as governor. When the founder and chair of Continental Resources needed Burgum’s ear in April of 2023, the governor’s staff was quick to carve out time on the governor’s schedule that same day, emails show. When a Continental executive asked if Burgum would write an endorsement for Hamm’s forthcoming memoir, Burgum pounced at the opportunity, writing that “Harold’s global impact has been immeasurable and is an inspiring story worthy of sharing.”
In his 2023 state of the state address, Burgum compared Hamm to President Theodore Roosevelt, describing the oil tycoon as being “in the arena for North Dakota, our nation’s energy independence and making America stronger on the world stage.” During his keynote speech at the energy security summit in Oklahoma, Burgum called Hamm a “game-changer” and applauded industry leaders in the room for “empowering the world,” “improving lives” and “making the world safer.”
Burgum and Hamm’s ties go beyond a personal friendship and shared political interests. As CNBC first reported, Burgum earned up to $50,000 in royalties in 2023 from a lease his family signed allowing Hamm’s Continental Resources to develop oil and gas on 200 acres of the family’s farm.
Burgum joins a lengthy list of Trump cabinet officials with a history of suing the agency they’ve been tapped to lead. During his tenure as governor, North Dakota sued Interior several times, including a case aimed at blocking a Biden administration-era rule meant to balance conservation and ecosystem restoration with oil drilling, logging and grazing on acres managed by the Bureau of Land Management. Corporate giants like Continental Resources, which holds leases on federal land in North Dakota and other western states, are likely to benefit enormously from Burgum’s actions in the coming months and years.
Ahead of being sworn in as Trump’s interior secretary, Burgum signed an ethics agreement in which he pledged to divest his assets in numerous companies, as well as his financial interests in entities with oil, gas and mineral leases. He also committed to take several steps to avoid and quickly resolve any potential conflicts of interest, including recusing himself from certain matters before the agency.