Exclusive – Doug Burgum: Biden’s China-Friendly Energy Policies Are ‘Destabilizing the Grid’

Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND) told Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Saturday that President Joe Biden’s energy policies, which he sees as greatly benefiting China, are “destabilizing the grid,” driving up costs, and “making the planet less clean.” 

Burgum, a former 2024 presidential candidate who endorsed Trump on the eve of the Iowa Caucuses, joined host and Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle on the program, where Boyle asked him to detail “the biggest mistakes that Joe Biden made with regard to energy policy.”

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Burgum, who focused on energy as a central theme in his campaign, pointed to Biden’s electric vehicle (EV) policy, his administration’s move to break out strategic oil reserves as gas prices soared in 2022 — a midterm election year — and sanctions that either “failed” or were “loosened,” benefiting foreign adversaries and allowing China to stockpile its own reserves.

“With Joe Biden, it starts with a simple thing: He’s surrounded by people who have convinced him that somehow, someway that if we convert all transportation fuels in America from liquid fuels to electric vehicles (EVS), if we go all EVs that somehow we’re going to save the planet, save the world, save the environment,” said Burgum, who announced Monday he would not seek a third term as governor. “That’s the foundation, and that foundation is the false premise. It’s a false premise because… we fought for four or five decades to get out from underneath OPEC and dependence on foreign energy. Under President Trump, we finally, on a net basis, got to energy independence, but then we have a shot at getting the energy dominance, but we got to energy independence.”

He drew a stark contrast with Biden, noting the administration is “pushing all of this, the green new fantasy, with what’s literally almost a trillion dollars of all that money that flowed out with the subsidies — subsidizing cars, subsidizing electric batteries, subsidizing 500,000 charging stations,” and emphasized the policies are benefiting China, and furthering American dependence with its adversary. Moreover, Burgum, whom Trump said he would like to have as part of a potential second administration, emphasized that the Biden vision is actually having a net negative impact on the environment.

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“Eighty-five percent of the rare earth minerals are controlled by China; we’d just be trading our dependence on OPEC for decades to a future where we’re completely dependent on China,” Burgum said. “And guess what: If you care about the environment, China turns out [to be the] world’s largest polluter, world’s largest emitter of CO2 by a huge margin. And if you get a battery from China, it’s manufactured in the manufacturing plant powered by coal, not coal like we do in North Dakota, where we can decarbonize the coal and produce base-load energy that’s sustainable in North Dakota with modern technology. I’m talking like 1980s-technology; plants that are opening up one a week in China. They have over 240 coal plants permitted, they could open up more in the next couple of years than we have actually operating in the U.S.”

“So whether it’s transportation fuels or base-load electricity, they’re destabilizing the grid, they’re raising the costs, they’re making the planet less clean because if you would care about the planet, you’d want to have every drop of energy produced in the United States because we do it cleaner, safer and smarter better than anybody here,” he emphasized.

A bulldozer pushes coal onto a conveyor belt at the Jiangyou Power Station on January 28, 2022, in Jiangyou, Mianyang City, Sichuan Province of China. (Liu Zhongjun/China News Service via Getty Images)

He further noted a North Dakota oil company is “using carbon sequestration and enhanced oil recovery” and producing “a carbon-negative barrel of oil.”

“They’re greener than Patagonia,” he added. “If you want clean liquid fuels, you’re on team USA. If you want EVs, you’re on team China.”

After pointing to the “loosening” of sanctions against Iran and Venezuela and the “failed sanctions against Russia,” Burgum argued Biden is “empowering foreign dictators and adversaries, who are then selling low-cost energy to China.”

“China is importing a record amount of oil and gas every day, ten million barrels of oil a day. They’re the largest importer in the world. We’ve turned Russia and Iran and Venezuela into China’s discount gas station,” he said.

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And while China is raking in oil and gas, Burgum highlighted, “Joe Biden dropped our Strategic Petroleum Reserve in half when we didn’t have a strategic issue.”

“He had a midterm election problem, so he turned it into the Political Petroleum Reserve and drained it for political purposes, but not for strategic like World War III purposes,” he quipped.

Burgum suggested that “the sum was it’s almost like the energy policy was written by China, written by our adversaries because it benefits them.”

President Joe Biden speaks at the General Motors Factory ZERO electric vehicle assembly plant on November 17, 2021, in Detroit, Michigan. (Nic Antaya/Getty Images)

“It hurts American manufacturers, it hurts American consumers. It hurts anybody who’s got to drive their car to go to work every day,” he continued. “It hurts shippers and truckers because it’s raised the price of fuel. It hurts farmers because of the cost of what they have to put in their tanks. And if you’re a lobsterman in New Hampshire, the price of diesel went through the roof, and I talked to folks out there who were ready to close their operations after four generations of being lobstermen and fishermen just because of the price of diesel. In New England, we’ve got some of the highest-cost energy in the nation, and there’s no reason for that… They blocked pipelines. We could be running clean natural gas from Pennsylvania into New England, where in New Hampshire, 41% of the people burn dirty heating oil.”

Burgum called the overall energy policy “so wrong in every direction.”

“I know President Trump’s gonna get it turned around going the other way, and it will make the world safer. It’ll make our economy stronger, and it’s going to make the environment cleaner,” Burgum forecasted. “All of that is going to be accomplished under President Trump.”

The governor also addressed rumors he was being spoken of among some in Trump’s orbit as a potential running mate to the 45th president or a potential cabinet member in a potential second Trump administration.