Pick Six: Secretary Burgum’s First Wave of Orders Signals Change at the Department of the Interior

As part of an ongoing Blog series, Arnold & Porter’s cross-practice Energy and Energy Transition team is highlighting key legal and regulatory developments for clients across economic sectors.

On February 3, 2025, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum signed six Secretary’s Orders (SOs) that will shape the U.S. Department of the Interior’s approach to energy and natural resource policy for the foreseeable future. The SOs broadly correspond to the energy-related executive orders (EOs) and presidential memoranda signed by President Trump shortly after inauguration.

The SOs provide guidance to departmental employees regarding policy priorities, but, like the EOs, they generally reserve final decisions on particular matters for a later date. Of note are the very aggressive timelines in the SOs: many call for reviews of certain subjects within 15 days of the order’s issuance.

Below, we summarize key components of specific SOs:

• Secretary’s Order No. 3417: Addressing the National Energy Emergency. This SO recognizes that President Trump declared a National Energy Emergency in EO 14156 and directs a 15-day review for identification of “emergency” and “other” authorities available to (1) “facilitate the identification, permitting, leasing, development, production, transportation, refining, distribution, exporting, and generation of domestic energy resources and critical minerals” and (2) “expedite … all authorized and appropriate infrastructure, energy, environmental, and natural resources projects … [for] the supplying, refining, transporting, and exporting of energy.”
  
  Unlike the corresponding EO, the SO does not define “energy” or “energy resources.” Nor does it expressly exclude wind and solar energy (as the EO did).
• Secretary’s Order No. 3418: Unleashing American Energy. This is the longest, most detailed, and arguably most important of the recent Secretary’s Orders, defining four categories of sweeping departmental reviews and “action plans” that must be completed within 15 days.
  
  Building from President Trump’s revocation of 12 climate and energy-related EOs issued by President Biden, SO 3418 first requires the department to undertake a review to identify “any actions taken to implement” those EOs and to “terminate” those actions, including by “terminating any contract or agreement on behalf of entities or programs abolished in the revoked EOs.”
  
  Second, the SO directs the department to specify “steps that, as appropriate, will … suspend, revise, or rescind” dozens of specific actions taken by the department during the Biden administration. These actions include high-profile rulemakings like the Bureau of Land Management’s Fluid Minerals and Landscape Health Rules, a variety of M-Opinions issued by the department’s Solicitor, the governing Five-Year Offshore Oil and Gas Leasing Program, and numerous pieces of sub-regulatory guidance, among many other departmental actions.
  
  Third, the SO requires review of “processes, policies, and programs for issuing grants, loans, contracts, or any other financial disbursements of all appropriated funds from the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.”
  
  Finally, the SO establishes over a dozen miscellaneous reviews attendant to particular policy goals, including review of all lands withdrawn under, e.g., the Antiquities Act or the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, and review of all critical habitat designations promulgated by the Fish and Wildlife Service under the Endangered Species Act.
• Secretary’s Order No. 3419: Delivering Emergency Price Relief for American Families and Defeating the Cost-of-Living Crisis. The presidential memorandum by this name ordered agencies to “deliver emergency price relief, consistent with applicable law, to the American people and increase the prosperity of the American worker,” but did not identify particular action items to that end. The corresponding SO requires a 15-day departmental review of “programs and regulations to identify those that may result in higher costs for the American people,” with “particular[] focus on coercive ‘climate’ policies that increase the cost of food or energy” (internal quotations in original).
• Secretary’s Order No. 3420: Announcing President Trump’s Revocation of Former Outer Continental Shelf Withdrawals. On January 20, 2025, President Trump revoked two memoranda, issued by President Biden, that had withdrawn significant portions of the outer continental shelf (OCS) from oil and natural gas leasing. This SO notifies the department of that revocation, and further orders the department to “take all actions available to expedite the leasing of the OCS for oil and gas exploration and production.”
• Secretary’s Order No. 3421: Achieving Prosperity Through Deregulation. This SO implements the EO of the same name, which President Trump signed on January 31, 2025. That EO requires agencies to “identify” for “repeal” 10 regulations for every new proposed regulation, and, similarly, to offset the incremental costs of the new regulation by “eliminating” the costs from at least 10 prior regulations. The SO directs the department to “begin identifying and proposing existing regulations for potential elimination in anticipation … [of] any new regulations.”
• Secretary’s Order No. 3422: Unleashing Alaska's Extraordinary Resource Potential. The corresponding EO broadly seeks to undo nearly every major action taken by the Biden administration to disapprove or discourage development projects in Alaska, including its cancellation of leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and recent regulations for the National Petroleum Reserve. The SO requires action plans to accomplish these goals within 15 days.

*          *          *

Taken together, the SOs set an ambitious schedule for departmental officials to begin implementing President Trump’s executive orders, requiring a suite of agency-wide reviews and action plans in only a matter of days. The coming months and years at the department are likely to be shaped in meaningful part by those reviews, which will in turn depend on the significant exercise of discretion by department leadership. The SOs will present department decisionmakers with a host of complex legal and policy questions that, most likely, will be addressed in litigation and ultimately decided by the courts. Stakeholders with interests potentially affected by these SOs should follow developments closely, as they will unfold quickly over the next several weeks. Questions may be directed to the authors or other members of the Energy and Energy Transition cross-practice group at Arnold & Porter.

© Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP 2025 All Rights Reserved. This Blog post is intended to be a general summary of the law and does not constitute legal advice. You should consult with counsel to determine applicable legal requirements in a specific fact situation.