President Donald Trump said on Monday he would nominate David Bernhardt, a former energy lobbyist, to be secretary of the interior, the department that oversees U.S. public lands. Bernhardt, currently the acting secretary at the Interior Department, is widely expected to continue pushing the Trump administration's plan to boost domestic fossil fuels production by opening more U.S. public lands to drilling and mining. The Interior Department, which employs more than 70,000 people and oversees more than 20 percent of the U.S. land surface, has been central to Trump's "energy dominance" policy of boosting energy production. After working under Bush, Bernhardt became a lawyer and lobbyist at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck for water and oil interests. He represented Noble Energy Inc, Rosemont Copper Co, Sempra Energy, and California's Westlands Water District, among others.

Source: dna February 05, 2019 04:07 UTC