Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin detailed how he and the agency are seeking to claw back around $20 billion in grant funding, which Zeldin accused the Biden administration of rushing out. Burgum suggested that similar levels of waste could potentially be found in the interior department and that he and his team are “looking everywhere” for it.

One area that Burgum and DOGE will look at first is the interior department’s grants and consultants, as the secretary asked, “what is our own team doing?” if the department is paying consultants to do its own work.

“And this is the thing we’ll take a close look at, but every agency has got an opportunity for improvement,” Burgum explained on Fox News’s America’s Newsroom. “But in interior, of course, we’ve got real work to do. We have all the national parks, 500 million acres of land, 700 million acres of sub service, 1.7 billion of off shore acres, and President Trump wants us to get a return on investment for the American people on our balance sheet, and our balance sheet, interior, is America’s balance sheet.”

Burgum added that the Interior Department has people “ready to get going” on helping the United States revive its energy production, something President Donald Trump campaigned on during his 2024 campaign.

The interior secretary also dismissed how energy prices have yet to go down, suggesting the Biden administration worked to “shove money out the door” right before former President Joe Biden left the White House. As of Thursday, the national average gas price sits at roughly $3.160 per gallon, slightly higher than the average price of $3.065 a month ago.

Burgum was confirmed as interior secretary last month in a 79-18 vote, with the majority of Senate Democrats voting for him. Previously, Burgum served two terms as North Dakota’s governor as a Republican.