Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum was my guest today:

Transcript:

HH: West Texas crude is at $107 dollars a barrel, and Brent crude is at $119 and change. To talk about that, the war, and much more, I’m joined by the Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum. Secretary Burgum, welcome back. It’s good to see you again. How goes the good fight in D.C?

DB: Well, Hugh, it’s fantastic to be with you, and things are going great here, as they are going great for our whole country.

HH: All right, let’s start with the story in the Wall Street Journal this morning. Trump tells aides to prepare for extended blockade of Iran. Has he told you that, Mr. Secretary? Have you been in those conversations as chair of the Energy Dominance Council?

DB: We’ve been in a lot of conversations, and of course, Chris Wright and I have both been intimately involved in this in our roles on the National Energy Dominance Council. So yeah, there’s been a lot of discussion. But I’d just say President Trump doing the right thing. Iran, which basically, it’s not, we should stop calling it Iran. We should just call it the IRGC. We’ve got a terrorist organization with an oil field, and they’ve been militarily defeated, as President Trump describes. But now, with Scott Bessent, with Economic Fury, we have to stop them from being able to fund terrorism and fund exporting terrorism around the world. I mean, they were funding as many as 24 different terror groups with oil money. So the blockade is not just a physical blockade, it’s also an economic blockade to ensure that they don’t have the cash to keep raining terror and holding the whole world hostage.

HH: Now Mr. Secretary, in my opinion, this is the most important thing the President has done, including what he’s done for the Supreme Court. This is the most important thing. Has he said to you anything like, ‘hey, Doug, this is going to take six months. What’s oil going to cost after six months?’ in order to bankrupt and bring down the crazies, the lunatics, as Secretary Rubio calls them. Has he said anything like that to you, a time range?

DB: Nope, he has not talked about that. As you know, President Trump gets lots of input from lots of people. He’s the one that’s driving the show and making the decisions here. I think he’s indicated to the whole world his willingness to get a deal, but he’s got some things that are, unlike past presidents, when he’s got a red line, if he says they’re not going to have a nuclear weapon, and they’re not going to have the material to build one, he means it. And so that’s, you know, there are some things that have to happen. But President Trump has described as recently as last week multiple times that he feels like he’s got, patience is certainly on, he’s got the patience, and he’s got the time on his side in this negotiation.

HH: And so you have no reason to question his resolve? I hope you have no reason to question his resolve, because we’ve got to win this. We have to win.

DB: Yeah. Well, I have none whatsoever. And again, I mean, this is, President Trump ultimately has already made the world safer by massively degrading Iran’s capability. We saw their true colors when they were attacking their Gulf neighbors. I mean, this is, in the middle of this, people, you know, start off a conversation with, about gas prices in the U.S. But this is a realignment of geopolitical alliances around the whole world. And the United States is going to come out of this much stronger and aligned with those people that share our interests stronger than when we went into it. And again, as you know, whether it’s Venezuela, the Panama Canal, unleashing our energy in Alaska, President Trump’s got a strategy that’s, Cuba, I mean, he’s got a strategy, really, of reshaping the whole world. And at the end, it’s going to make the world safer and America much more prosperous.

HH: Let’s go to Alaska, then, Mr. Secretary. We’ve got an LNG pipeline that should be opening up there that Europe really needs, I mean, really needs that LNG. Is it making progress? Are you behind it? Is everyone going to get it done?

DB: Yeah, everyone’s behind it, and it’s making progress. But I would say the other thing that’s happened in the last eight weeks is the interest in getting Alaska going again. At one point, you know, this was a state that was producing almost two million barrels a day. Now, it’s down to less than 500,000 a day. We’ve got a pipeline with excess capacity. We’ve got Japan getting 92% of their oil from the Strait of Hormuz. You’ve got other countries in the Pacific that are allies, places like Korea, South Korea where we’ve got 28,000 troops that are dependent on Middle Eastern oil. All of these folks are ready and understand what it would be to get U.S. energy on a path that has no chokeholds. And you’re coming, you’re talking eight days from Anchorage to Tokyo versus, on a good week, it’s 28 days if there’s other conflicts going on in the South China Sea or any of the straits that you have to go through. It could be a 45-day shipment time from the Middle East to Japan. The eagerness to buy more oil and more LNG from Alaska has never been higher. And so, of course, when you’ve got strong demand, you’ve got capital that wants to flow into that market. And we had a record lease sale on the North Slope. We’re back to holding the required lease sales at the National Petroleum Reserve, Alaska. We’re not talking about a wildlife refuge. We’re talking about something that’s literally named the National Petroleum Reserve that Biden had shut down now open up again. And we had over a dozen companies competing up there, record revenue coming in that supports the state, the tribe, the federal government, a record amount of interest from companies that want to develop there. And we’ve got the infrastructure on the oil side to support them immediately. So exciting time. President Trump on day one, executive order, unleashing Alaska’s enormous potential, and under this administration, that’s happening.

HH: Now Mr. Secretary, you’re talking to a retired Endangered Species Act lawyer. You convene the God Squad. Or somebody did – the seven members, Cabinet level, to decide to exempt the rice whale from the ESA’s restrictions in the Gulf of Mexico. Bravo. Why don’t you do that for, like the California Gnatcatcher and the Vernal Pool Shrimp, and all the things that are in the way of housing development, driving up the cost of housing everywhere in the United States? Are there more God Squad findings ahead?

DB: Well, the first thing I would say is you’re spot on, Hugh, on, well, let’s just take a step back and look at the ESA in general. You know, this thing was designed over 50 years ago to save species. 97% of the species that have gone on the list have never come off. I would call that a fail in the sense that it’s like the Hotel California. You can check in, you can’t check out. But it is the, the point was to save species. We should say, we should be celebrating when things come off the list, instead of having a culture where we celebrate when they go on the list. Because it turns out if you go on the list, it guarantees that you may never be saved, because 97% never come off. But it’s 100% that we’re going to stop building stuff or raise the cost. And we have to be a nation that is able to build things. And so the weaponization of the NEPA and ESA is, you know, raises the cost of just about everything. You mentioned housing. It raises the cost of building pipelines or it stops all this. And we’re competing in a world where we have to be able to build infrastructure. If ESA had existed 150 years ago, there wouldn’t be a single transcontinental railroad today. If it existed in the 1960’s, there wouldn’t be an interstate highway system. So we have to balance these things out. We know that we can balance that. We know we can be a country where we can protect wildlife, protect the environment, and build great things. But we have to get back to that mentality, because so much of the creep that has gone on in these regulations, we’ve looked at the NEPA regulations at Interior. 80% of what was in those regulations was not connected to the original law. We’ve taken 80% out and put it in an appendix. People can look at it if they’re interested, but that’s, you’re not being held to a standard that does not include what Congress, we’re only being held to what Congress passed, not what some other bureaucrat imagined on top of the original legislation.

HH: And the exemptions committee was meant to be used. I wish you’d just schedule one monthly and ask for five files, and get the grey wolf off, and get the grizzly off.

DB: Yeah.

HH: Let me close with this.

DB: Well, and to answer that question, the Secretary of War, in the law for the Endangered Species Committee, requested a meeting and requested for national security purposes to hold that meeting. And when that meeting is held, it wasn’t optional. In the law, it’s a requirement that that committee vote if there’s a proof of a national security risk. In this case, there certainly was, because you know, 15% of our oil and gas production comes from the Gulf. And the idea that somehow, one lawsuit could shutdown the entire Gulf, that’s a national security concern. And for people that are concerned about the rice whale. All of the environmental protections are still in. The people that have to be observers on boats, the use of the restrictions of speed if there’s whales sighted in those areas, those things, no one lifted any environmental regulations. They just, we just lifted the, this potential of a lawsuit shutting down the entire Gulf. That’s the only thing we changed. Everybody’s still concerned about protecting the rice whales.

HH: Well, I would love Secretary Hegseth to get it together and invoke for the Desert Tortoise in the Mojave Desert that screws up the training at the fort out there. I can go on and on. I want to get one more question in, Mr. Secretary, about pipelines in the Middle East. UAE and Saudi Arabia have picked up about a third of the oil supply via pipeline. Are they going to build new ones?

DB: Well, that’s certainly a topic that’s under discussion. And when you take a look at the lost revenue versus the cost of building pipelines, you take a look at the ability to circumvent a rogue terrorist group controlling a strait, I mean, the IRGC is basically the Houthis now on the other end of the Middle East.

HH: Yup.

DB: …in terms of trying to control a chokepoint. The world shouldn’t stand for it. International freedom of movement should be the standard. All of our Europeans allies and Pacific allies that receive oil from there should all be on our side. But meanwhile, of course, UAE and Saudi can take, they can take things into their own hands. They’ve got the resources to build that infrastructure. We should help them and make sure that we get energy flowing around the world.

HH: Secretary Doug Burgum, keep coming back. I didn’t even ask you about the Teddy Roosevelt Library. I know it’s opening on July 4th in North Dakota. I’ll bet you’re going to be there. Come back before then to promote it. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. I’ll be right back, America.

End of interview.