Among the executive orders President Donald Trump has issued during the start of his new term are a few that affect public lands, mainly dealing with energy and energy production. With the Senate confirmation of Doug Burgum as Interior Secretary, lots of observers are looking at what the future of public lands may look like. Burgum this week signed an order which aims to implement provisions of the president’s executive order called “Unleashing American Energy.”
Jonathan Thompson, contributing editor to High Country News and runs the Land Desk on Substack, joined The Show to discuss, starting with some of the potential impacts and changes with regard to public lands that we could see under the Trump administration.
Full conversation
JONATHAN THOMPSON: Yeah, I think, I mean, I think we're going to see a lot of changes with regulations. There's going to be a lot of rollbacks. You know, that's Trump's big thing. That's what he did last time. He's already started doing it, which is where he's actually taking regulations that the Biden administration passed, and just revoking them and rolling them back, getting rid of them, and then we've already seen he's paused all new permitting for renewable energy on public lands.
So that's another thing that's kind of interesting. It's kind of the opposite of rolling back the regulations. He's rolling back the regulations on fossil fuels, but implementing more on renewables. How that plays out on the public lands themselves is, you know, it's always kind of a little bit of a mystery, because a lot of it depends on what the oil companies might want to do on oil prices and that sort of thing.
So even if he rolls back all the regulations, but nobody wants to drill, it's not going to create this huge rush on public lands. But if he rolls back all the regulations, and the price of oil goes up and makes it more profitable to drill, then yeah, you could have this kind of rush on things, and you'll see a lot of impacts. More impacts than you would have before, because the regulations and the environmental protections aren't there anymore.
MARK BRODIE: Is it safe to say that most of what the president is looking to do on public lands have to do with energy in one form or another?
THOMPSON: Yeah, I mean, I think so most of it is there's definitely one of the things that a lot of people are worried that he'll do again is to shrink or revoke national monument designation. And sometimes that's related to energy, but at other times it's just it's related to all kinds of different things. So but in the most, in most cases, definitely the sort of “drill, baby drill," and the Energy Dominance agenda, or the Unleashing American Energy agenda, which the order that Trump put out on his first day was called Unleashing American Energy. Those are obviously focused on energy, and mostly on fossil fuels, coal and oil and gas.
BRODIE: Let me ask you about something you said just a moment ago, in terms of whether or not companies will want to drill on this land. Because obviously, you know, the administration can't force companies to drill if they don't want to. Where are we right now in terms of whether or not it's seen as desirable, profitable- you know, whatever adjective you want to use — for these companies to go on to public lands, assuming they could get the access to it?
THOMPSON: Well, they have access to it, and they have been drilling like crazy. So right now, domestic oil and gas production is at an all time high, and a lot of that is on the strength of public lands. But mostly those public lands are in the Permian Basin, but public and private lands, almost all of the drilling, the new drilling, is going on in the Permian Basin, which is Texas and New Mexico. Texas doesn't have any public lands, really, but a lot of the drilling on the New Mexico side is on public lands.
And that's this record production is in spite of the fact that the Biden administration did implement quite a few regulations, new regulations on methane emissions, they raised royalty rates, they tried to ban oil and gas leasing, but none of that stopped the oil companies from doing what they wanted to do, which was drill. And the reason they're drilling now is because oil prices have been pretty high, and that drives it. Global demand is high. Demand for our oil is high because Russia is kind of cut off from a lot of people, and it's profitable. So I don't think that we're necessarily unless the price goes up a lot or some other things fall into place. I don't think we're going to see this huge bonanza on public lands, even if all kinds of regulations are dropped, not not right away at least.
BRODIE: One of the things that you write about is the energy grid. Which a lot of folks acknowledge, you know, could use some upgrading. Could use some TLC. Does it seem as though the administration is looking to do anything with the grid, and potentially, is there a role for public lands in trying to achieve that?
THOMPSON: Yeah. I mean, well, this is definitely a big issue. As far as really the electrical grid is outdated as it was built for basically a different kind of power structure, where big industrial users were using the power, and centralized coal plants were generating it. It's changed now there's more renewables, there's different kinds of use patterns. And what does that mean?
One of the things that it means is that it needs more transmission lines. And I mean long distance transmission lines that will carry, say, wind power from Wyoming to California, for example. And those are going to cross all kinds of lands, including lots of public lands. If it's in the West, you know, it's probably mostly public lands that it crosses. So public lands can definitely play a role there. And a lot of climate advocates, a lot of energy utility people and energy people, really want more transmission so that they can get this clean energy moving around the West. And that definitely takes public lands.
But it's very slow, because building these huge projects across all these different jurisdictions, it's a big deal. And so there's been a big push for permitting reform, where you could put maybe deadlines on these projects. And a lot of people were hoping that the Trump administration would bring that kind of reform. I don't know that it will. I mean, what we've seen so far is he did issue an energy emergency executive order, and it mentioned the grid, but only mentioned it and didn't talk specifics.
BRODIE: I'm wondering if there are other things related to public lands and the new administration that you're looking out for, be it recreation or you mentioned national monuments a few moments ago. Like, are there other sort of non-energy related issues that this administration might be looking to take up as it relates to public lands?
THOMPSON: Yeah. I mean, I definitely think national monuments are going to be a big one to watch. Also mining reform. I mean, I think in one of his in his unleashing energy, or maybe the energy emergency one. He said he wants to lax regulations on mining on public lands, and they're all very, already very lax. So that's one, and that's for critical middle minerals that are for energy, like lithium.
But it's also for all kinds of other mining as well, from copper to gold to silver. So that's what I'm looking at, one that I don't expect to see any change on is grazing, public lands. Grazing, it's a very contentious issue. It's very controversial. Environmental groups have been fighting to get some kind of reform for years and years, and it never happens no matter who's in the White House.
So I mean, there's not much Trump can do to make it easier or to loosen regulations on grazing. And there's no reason that he would want to tighten them, politically speaking. So I don't think anything's gonna happen there.
