Gov. Burgum applauded a ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Traynor ordering the federal Bureau of Land Management to resume quarterly sales of oil and gas leases on public lands in North Dakota

Bismarck, N.D. – According to the state officials, Governor Doug Burgum released the following statement:

“It should not take a court order to compel the Biden administration to obey the law, or to have the BLM do what it has been directed by Congress to do, but in this case it did, and we applaud Judge Traynor’s order which requires BLM to resume their lawfully required quarterly oil and gas lease sales.

From the beginning, North Dakota has opposed President Biden’s illegal ban on federal oil and gas leasing, and we will continue to fight their misguided attacks on U.S. energy that hurt the global environment by pushing energy supply to countries that don’t produce energy as cleanly as the United States and put our nation’s economy and energy security at risk. 

For global stability, we should be selling U.S. energy to our friends and allies, not forcing them to buy it from our adversaries.” 

In his ruling, Traynor found that BLM “very likely violated their mandatory statutory duties to plan and timely complete mandatory analyses of individual parcels in North Dakota” for oil and gas lease sales on federal lands.