EXCLUSIVE: Despite the , President Donald Trumps “energy czar,” Doug Burgum, is confident the “temporary blip up” in gas and energy prices facing Americans will come back down very soon as the presidents “drill baby drill” agenda takes effect.
In an interview with Fox News Digital, Burgum, who leads the Interior Department and chair of Trumps National Energy Dominance Council, said: “Its all about supply.”
“You want prices to go down? Supply has got to go up,” he said. To this end, he said his agency approved a record 6,000-plus drilling permits on U.S. soil, reversing the s trend of increased regulation that he said had stunted the countrys energy independence.
“We have a temporary blip up now because of the conflict in the , but as you heard the news earlier this morning, energy prices dropped a lot today, and stock markets [are] up and energy prices down; those are all positive things for working Americans to have those two things happening simultaneously,” he said.
Despite criticism of the presidents actions on the global stage, Burgum said these moves, such as the and negotiations with leadership, are going to help reduce prices for Americans.
“What happened in Venezuela actually helps Americans a lot because now we’ve got Venezuelan oil flowing towards Gulf of America refineries in Louisiana and Texas,” he said.
Another major policy shift Burgum said he expects to make a big difference for Americans is the administrations actions to “unleash Alaska.”
“The Biden administration had taken over 70 legal actions, executive orders from President Biden to regulatory actions, which were essentially sanctioning more than we sanctioned Iran during the last administration,” he explained.
Pressed on when Americans can expect to start seeing prices tick back down, Burgum said, “I think we started to see how they were happening and they happened quite effectively over the first year of the Trump administration.” He also pointed out that prices “vary a lot” depending on which state you live in and the extent of regulation and taxes placed on oil and gas production.
“Consumers need to understand that it is not just federal action, but it’s state and local action that’s often driving up the cost of your energy,” he said. “It’s not quite as simple as red state versus blue state. But if you take a look at gas prices before the war, red states were among all the lowest states in the country, blue states were among the highest in terms of that. And it was a reflection of the policies of those state legislatures and those governors that were driving energy prices up.”
As an example, he said that just a month ago, gas prices in Iowa were under $2 per gallon, while the price in California was $5.
“California imports 63 percent of its oil from foreign countries,” he explained, adding, “At the time of this breakout with Iran ⦠California, by their own data, provided by the state of California, the number one country they were importing oil from in California was from Iraq.”
“They always brag about, Oh, if we were a country, we’d have one of the world’s largest economies. And if they were a county, they would have designed for themselves one of the most energy-dependent and energy-expensive economies,” he said of California.
“They’re not saving the planet by using foreign oil in California when you could have been getting clean, reliable, affordable energy, say from the Permian Basin in Texas or New Mexico,” he continued. “When you think you’re saving the planet by blocking U.S. infrastructure, you artificially raise the prices.”
To push back on this, Burgum said that, authorized by Trumps energy emergency declaration, Energy Secretary Chris Wright recently ordered California to reopen its Santa Ynez pipeline system to resume pumping domestic offshore oil. The order is being challenged by California in court; however, oil has already begun being pu
