Donald Trump chose a former lawmaker from New Mexico on Wednesday to oversee the country’s public ramping up of fossil fuel production.
The nominee for the Bureau of Land Management (Blm), former representative Steve Pearce of New Mexico, must be confirmed by the Senate. The agency manages a quarter-billion acres – about 10% of US land. It is also responsible for 700m hectares of underground minerals, including large reserves of oil, natural gas and coal.
The agency’s policies that end up restricting control of the White House have shifted between Republicans and Democrats.
Under Democratic President Joe Biden, former Bureau Director Tracy Stone-Manning Curbed Oil drilling and coal lands in federal powers to bid on the climate crisis.
Trump and Republicans in Congress immediately moved to BIDEN’s actions. In a month they opened millions of acres of public lands for mining and drilling under land plans and precautionary measures formulated by the Biden administration.
But some moves fell flat, including a proposal by Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee to sell more than 2m hectares of federal lands to states or other entities. In October, the largest sale of the government’s coal lease in more than a decade riding on a dirty waste rejected by the Blm.
A previous nominee to lead the agency, the long-term oil industry Kathleen Sgamma, who imitated the revelations of Enrobos in 2021 for the attack on the US Capitol.
Pearce is a former fighter pilot and Vietnam Veteran who leads a successful oil service company in New Mexico. He was first elected to the house in 2003 and served seven terms in a district spanning oil fields and many public lands under federal management.
Pearce has a conservative voting record and advocated for ranchers in New Mexico when parts of the Lincoln National Forest were closed to protect the New Mexico Meadowow Mouse.
He ran unsuccessfully for the US Senate against Democratic Incumbent Tom Udall in 2008, and lost a bid in 2018 to Democrat Michelle Lujan Grisham.
Pearce later served as State Party Chairman and was a staunch supporter of Trump, who lost three times in New Mexico.
The land bureau went four years without a confirmed director during Trump’s first term. The Republican president also moved his title to Colorado before returning it to Washington DC, under BIDEN.
The agency had about 9,250 employees at the start of the government shutdown on October 1. That’s up from nearly 800 employees since the start of Trump’s term, which follows widespread layoffs and layoffs driven by the administration’s efforts to rein in the federal workforce.
The oil, gas and coal permit continues to be shut down and most of the Bureau’s employees are released from furloughs.