President-elect Donald Trump has picked North Dakota Republican Gov. Doug Burgum to serve as both interior secretary and “energy czar,” a newly created role that will orchestrate the administration’s sweeping plans to repeal climate rules, scrap clean-energy subsidies, and boost oil and gas production on millions of acres of federal lands nationwide.

In Burgum, Trump has chosen a close ally with deep connections to the oil industry CEOs who helped fund his campaign. The czar role does not require Senate confirmation.

After announcing Burgum’s selection as interior secretary in a speech Thursday, Trump revealed his additional appointment in a statement Friday. The president-elect said Burgum would lead a new National Energy Council comprising all agencies and departments involved in the production, regulation and transportation of “ALL forms of American Energy.”

Republican North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum listens as former President Donald Trump, in foreground, talks to reporters at Manhattan criminal court on May 14, in New York. Justin Lane/Pool Photo via AP, file

“This Council will oversee the path to U.S. ENERGY DOMINANCE by cutting red tape, enhancing private sector investments across all sectors of the Economy, and by focusing on INNOVATION over long-standing, but totally unnecessary, regulation,” he added.

Trump has been transparent about what he expects from Burgum: an evisceration of the rules and policies that speed the nation’s shift away from fossil fuels and toward cleaner energy sources. The president-elect’s plans include revoking limits on planet-warming pollution from cars and power plants, ending a “pause” on new exports of liquefied natural gas, and abdicating America’s leadership role in global climate negotiations.

Trump’s priorities on energy are so expansive that his appointees are unlikely to address all of them in the next four years, said Andrew Wheeler, who ran the Environmental Protection Agency for 2½ years during the first Trump administration.

“There is a long laundry list,” Wheeler said Thursday at a Washington event held by the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group. “There is going to have to be a triage.”

In appointing an energy czar, Trump followed in the footsteps of two Democratic presidents. President Barack Obama first established the role of a White House climate and energy adviser to help broker a deal on greenhouse gas standards for cars and trucks, and President Joe Biden tapped a climate czar to coordinate his administration’s ambitious climate agenda.

No president, however, has given this portfolio to someone who would simultaneously serve as a Cabinet member. And this time, the czar role will be laser-focused on peeling back policies that Trump and his allies see as inhibiting U.S. fossil fuel production.

Burgum, 68, suspended his long-shot presidential bid last year and quickly endorsed Trump, developing a strong personal and political relationship with him. After Trump asked oil industry executives to help steer $1 billion toward his campaign, Burgum talked extensively with oil donors and CEOs, and he helped lead the campaign’s development of its energy policy.

At a fundraiser in Palm Beach, Florida, in May, Burgum told donors that Trump would halt Biden’s “attack” on fossil fuels, according to a recording of his remarks obtained by The Washington Post.

Among Trump’s biggest targets are restrictions on power plant emissions and auto industry mandates that push companies to manufacture more electric vehicles. The incoming administration is also expected to heed the oil and gas industry’s calls to repeal a new fee on emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that leaks into the atmosphere from drilling operations and pipelines.

Another top priority: clawing back billions of dollars in subsidies for clean-energy technologies used by a wide range of Americans, from consumers purchasing rooftop solar panels and electric cars to oil companies pursuing production that is more climate-friendly.

Trump has dismissed the scientific consensus that a rapid shift from fossil fuels is crucial to avoiding the most catastrophic impacts of climate change. He has vowed to reorient the federal government from carbon-free sources of energy, such as wind and solar power, and to pull the United States out of the Paris agreement, a global effort to limit warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above preindustrial levels.

Oil industry groups are already writing draft executive orders the White House can use as a template for reorienting federal energy policy. They are emboldened by a recent Supreme Court decision limiting the regulatory authority of agencies, which had already left some of the Biden administration’s landmark climate initiatives legally vulnerable.

The emphasis on unfettered production comes as the United States is producing more oil and gas than any country ever has. But oil industry executives want to export even more fuel and are seeking federal approval for projects that could expand production for years to come.

In addition to gutting environmental rules, Burgum will be tasked with overhauling the billions of dollars in tax incentives and rebates that were created by Biden’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act. Trump has said that he wants to eliminate all of that funding, which he calls the “green new scam.”

But the subsidies are driving major investment in red states, where Republican governors are using the tax breaks to lure factories that make electric vehicles and other clean-energy components, as well as oil company investment in nascent technologies that capture and store carbon dioxide.

Among those planned investments is a major pipeline in Burgum’s home state. Burgum is working to help the oil tycoon Harold Hamm, a close ally and fellow Trump confidant, move the project forward. The pipeline would be used to ship and store greenhouse gases that are trapped during fossil fuel production and stored underground. Burgum’s appointment could give Hamm influence over policy related to drilling on public lands.

Ending the clean-energy subsidies, meanwhile, would require congressional approval, and several Republican lawmakers have already cautioned Trump against their wholesale elimination. The GOP’s narrow majority in the House could make any changes to the incentives a heavy lift.

Large oil companies are also deeply invested in the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes lucrative tax breaks for some of the lower-emissions technologies they are pursuing. Several of the companies have also committed to align with the Paris agreement.

The biggest challenge for Burgum, though, may be delivering on a promise the president-elect made frequently during the campaign: to lower gas prices below $2 per gallon. Energy experts say such prices are highly unlikely, no matter how many environmental rules are lifted. Prices at the pump are driven by market factors outside the control of the White House, including the amount of oil pumped by countries in the OPEC consortium, global demand, and the balance sheets of oil companies.

Also in Burgum’s portfolio will be overseeing the rebirth of the domestic nuclear energy industry.

Shortages of other forms of zero-emission energy have renewed interest in nuclear plants, with tech companies eager to lock down as much of it as they can to fuel their energy-hungry data centers. Tech companies and nuclear firms are also eager to bring online a new generation of smaller, more nimble reactors. Nuclear power is the only zero-emission source of energy enthusiastically supported by most GOP leaders, including Trump. But thorny safety and environmental issues continue to overshadow the industry. There is still no national plan for disposing of the radioactive waste the plants create.

If approved by the Senate for the interior post, Burgum would steward hundreds of millions of acres of federally owned lands and waters, a role that would prove central to Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” agenda. Concentrated mostly in the West and Alaska, the department’s sprawling system of public lands includes not only national parks such as Yellowstone and Yosemite, but also property overseen by the Bureau of Land Management for cattle grazing, mining, and oil and gas drilling.

Interior also oversees dwindling water resources across the American West amid a climate-change-fueled megadrought. Interior officials last year brokered an agreement with the states along the Colorado River to conserve an unprecedented amount of their water supply in exchange for $1.2 billion in federal funding.