Doug Burgum Is Gutting America’s Public Lands Protections For His Big Oil Buddies

Burgum’s Decision Puts Taxpayers on the Hook for Big Oil’s Mess and Methane Stench

HELENA, MT – This week, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum proposed slashing the financial bonds fossil fuel corporations must post before drilling on public lands and eliminating methane emissions reduction plans previously required before receiving drilling permits. This follows a pattern of sweetheart deals Trump and Burgum’s Big Oil buddies have already received at Americans’ and taxpayers’ expense. 

“Trump and Burgum are putting oil derricks next to our national parks and sticking taxpayers with the cleanup bill,” said Jayson O’Neill, spokesperson for Save Our Parks. “They’ve gutted the workforce that protects our parks, killed the air quality monitoring that keeps visitors safe, and now they want to hand oil and gas companies a blank check, literally slashing the bonds that make sure drillers clean up their own mess. When those wells go orphan and the cleanup bill comes due, it’s taxpayers who pay. America’s national parks belong to every family in this country, not to the donors who bankroll this administration.”

In a rare glimpse into the thought process behind selling out America’s outdoor heritage and birthright, Donald Trump made clear in an interview that the primary motivator behind these types of decisions is doing “the opposite of what Biden did.” It is not for the American public, it’s not about the betterment of our nation, and it’s not America first. For Trump and Burgum, it’s about scoring cheap political points, which will always be more important to them than being good stewards of America’s national parks and public lands.

The bonding rollback by Burgum means taxpayers, not extractive corporations, will foot the bill when companies abandon wells and walk away. Thousands of orphaned wells already emit methane and benzene, a chemical linked to leukemia, across federal lands. Burgum is making that problem worse while eliminating the monitoring that would let anyone know.

Burgum continues to do the bidding of extractive corporations and interests at the expense of Americans’ beloved public lands, wildlife, and parks. Trump’s ultra-wealthy and controversial Interior Secretary axed the public lands rule, which gave other public land users equal footing, suspended air quality monitoring at sixty-three national parks, and moved to revoke the ten-mile drilling buffer around Chaco Culture National Historical Park, a protected landscape sacred to dozens of Pueblo and Tribal nations. Burgum also brokered a backroom deal for Continental Resources CEO Harold Hamm, sold off tracks in the protected Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for industrial oil and gas development, and iced the public out of public decisions, among other things. 

To speak with Save Our Parks spokesperson Jayson O’Neill, email jayson@focalpointstrategygroup.com.

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