Walleye cakes, peach cobbler and wine provided by North Dakota’s top energy lobbying group were on the menu in May when Doug Burgum, then the governor, invited oil and gas executives to his official residence.
The guest of honor: Harold Hamm, the billionaire founder of Continental Resources, one of the leading independent oil companies in the country.
He was a frequent presence at Mr. Burgum’s political events. Mr. Burgum, in turn, spoke at banquets honoring Mr. Hamm, wrote a glowing blurb for his memoir and likened him in an official address to former President Theodore Roosevelt.
Now, Mr. Burgum is President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice to lead the Interior Department and coordinate energy policy across government agencies. As he goes before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Thursday, Mr. Burgum’s relationships with oil and gas executives like Mr. Hamm are expected to raise questions. Democrats and activists said they worry about the amount of influence the industry will have on policies.
“Governor Burgum’s close friendship and financial relationship with billionaire oil and gas executive Harold Hamm presents a clear conflict of interest for the nominee slated to oversee the federal oil and gas leasing program,” said Tony Carrk, the executive director of Accountable.US, a watchdog group.
Mr. Trump campaigned on a promise to “drill, baby, drill.” He has said he wants to make it easier for energy companies to exploit natural resources, build new oil and gas pipelines and export terminals and end the development of wind energy, which competes with fossil fuels.
During the election campaign last year, Mr. Burgum, 68, acted as a liaison between Mr. Trump and fossil fuel executives who poured more than $75 million into his bid to retake the White House. He has said that as interior secretary, he intends to achieve “energy dominance.”
The United States is already producing and exporting record amounts of oil and gas.
The Interior Department has a budget of about $18 billion and is responsible for managing millions of acres of public lands and waters, protecting wildlife, maintaining national parks and monuments and overseeing most tribal programs.
A multimillionaire former Microsoft executive, Mr. Burgum was elected governor of North Dakota 2016, running as an outsider against what he called the “good old boy” Republican Party establishment. Once he won, oil companies including Continental Resources became the top funder of his inaugural celebrations, The Associated Press reported at the time. He ultimately served two terms, leaving office in December.
In recent years the bonds between Mr. Burgum and oil executives like Mr. Hamm have grown, according to public meetings and other documents, some of which were obtained by Fieldnotes, an oil and gas research group, and provided to The New York Times.
The links aren’t only political. Mr. Burgum’s family leases farmland to Continental Resources and Hess Corp., another oil and gas exploration company, to pump oil and gas, according to business records and a federal financial disclosure report first reported by CNBC. Mr. Burgum has made between $15,000 and $50,000 in royalties from the lease, the report shows.
Two nonprofit news organizations, The Dakota Monitor and ProPublica, reported last year that Mr. Burgum had voted some 20 times as a member of the state Industrial Commission, which conducts oversight of energy regulation, on matters that benefited both Continental and Hess.
Asked last year about the lease deal, Michael Nowatzki, the governor’s spokesman at the time, said it had preceded Mr. Burgum’s taking office and added that “tens of thousands of families and mineral owners have similar arrangements.” Mr. Burgum said in his financial disclosure reports, made public on Tuesday, that he would give up his holdings in the family leases if confirmed.
Continental did not respond to a request for comment.
According to the disclosures, Mr. Burgum earned more than $2 million last year from family businesses as well as investments in real estate and software companies.
Mark S. Jendrysik, a professor of political science at the University of North Dakota, noted that half the state’s budget comes from energy and said it was not unusual for officials to have close ties to the oil and gas industry.
“It’s such a small state, it’s hard not to have what people perceive as conflicts of interest,” Mr. Jendrysik said. North Dakota, he said, “is a one-party state, and the line between public and private sectors is fairly blurry.”
Mr. Burgum, he said, was well-liked and perceived as a moderate who took fairly standard Republican positions against government regulation, particularly in the energy sector.
In 2023, Mr. Burgum mounted a long-shot bid for the presidency. He soon dropped out and endorsed Mr. Trump, but along the way Mr. Hamm’s Continental Resources donated $250,000.
Rob Lockwood, an adviser to Mr. Burgum, dismissed concerns that Mr. Burgum’s ties to Mr. Hamm or other industry leaders would present a conflict to the role of interior secretary.
“American families can count on Doug Burgum, an avid outdoor recreationist, to deliver on President Trump’s vision for energy dominance, to drive down inflation and strengthen our national security,” Mr. Lockwood said in a statement.