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Washington D.C. – In recent days, details confirming the Trump administration’s suspected agenda of letting big oil interests and donors pillage America’s sacred public lands for profit have begun to creep into public view. This includes reporting on a leaked draft strategy memo from the U.S. Department of the Interior that outlines President Trump’s intent of opening up public lands to development in service to oil, gas and coal production that echoes language used by oil shill Secretary Doug Burgum who bluntly considers public lands “assets” on a “balance sheet”. In addition, President Trump has declared an “energy emergency” that has no basis in reality in order to limit environmental reviews of oil and gas projects on public lands and to fast-track industry permitting and approvals for such projects.

Now, a new review by government watchdog Accountable.US explores how the leaked Interior plans and “emergency declaration” offer the clearest evidence to date that the Trump administration is preparing policies that favor Big Oil at the expense of our environment and public lands, including companies that directly bankrolled the Trump campaign. Accountable.US found President Trump’s moves will directly benefit some major oil industry donors to his 2024 re-election efforts and his second-term inaugural committee. These companies and their executives gave more than $2.2 million to Trump and his affiliated political action committees in 2024 and gave $3 million to his inaugural committee.

“There is no ‘energy emergency’ in America, only a corruption crisis within the Trump administration that can’t wait to sell off America’s public lands to the President’s big oil and gas friends and donors. The big polluter lobby is now set up for a huge return on their investment in the Trump campaign and inaugural slush fund, while our public lands and air and water are treated as ‘assets’ for making money,” said Accountable.US Executive Director Tony Carrk. “The more the President lets his big oil contributors write their own rules, the less say the American people have in their environment and surroundings, while they pay more at the pump. Exactly how Project 2025 planned it.”

In focus are publicly traded and public land lease holding companies Occidental Petroleum, ExxonMobil, EOG Resources, Devon Energy, and ConocoPhillips which together held more than 1 million acres of public land and raked in almost $56 billion in profits in 2024. Occidental held the most leases among these companies, with 2,200. The company’s CEO, Vicki Hollub, gave Trump $400,000 and hosted a fundraiser for him in 2024. Devon Energy executives and their wives gave Trump more than$500,000 in 2024. Occidental, Exxon, and ConocoPhillips each gave $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee. Privately held Hilcorp Energy had the most public land acreage of all companies, with more than 750,000 acres. Hilcorp executive chairman Jeffery Hildebrand and his wife, Melinda, gave $1.3 million to Trump’s joint fundraising committee and the RNC in 2024. Hilcorp is known for being one of the worst polluters in the oil and gas industry.

The administration’s emerging plans for letting the oil and gas industry do whatever they please – clean air and water be damned – are the predictable result of the President installing top officials who are in bed with the oil industry and other big polluters, including Trump Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and  Deputy Secretary of the Interior Department nominee Katharine MacGregor. 

On May 7, Trump’s allies in Congress rammed through big oil and gas giveaways on the budget reconciliation bill that will codify the administration’s plunder of Americans’ public lands, healthcare, education, and other vital services to pay for fossil fuel profiteering and billionaire donor tax cuts. As noted by House Natural Resource Committee Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-CA), the bill “torches clean air and water protections, hands over our public lands to polluters at fire-sale prices, and rigs the rules so oil executives can rubber-stamp their own permits in secret.”  

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