EXCLUSIVE: Dozens of governors gathered at a convention in Washington, D.C., over the past few days, and Fox News Digital spoke to Wyoming’s Republican governor about the importance of American energy independence, the energy outlook for the next four years and the impact of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
“I’ve been a really strong, vocal advocate for something that Donald Trump keeps talking about, which is let the states do it,” Gov. Mark Gordon told Fox News Digital at the National Governors Association’s Winter Meeting.
“They can get things done faster. We’ve talked about this in energy, we’ve talked about it in so many other areas, education and so on. Let us run our own shops. Federalist notion, that’s what our country was founded on. That’s a good time to remember it, all these years later.”
Energy production was a much-talked-about issue at the winter meetings, particularly Wyoming, which leads the nation in coal production, has the country’s largest uranium reserves and is in the top 10 of states for oil and gas production.
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Gordon touted his track record of working with other governors in western states, particularly New Mexico’s Democrat governor, with regard to energy production and pushing back on the Biden administration’s efforts to halt new energy projects.
“We were frustrated to some degree by a couple of policies in some states on the coasts that were blocking our access to Asian markets, particularly for our coal, and then as the Biden administration came in, and they really shut down permitting, which, actually, this is one of the great things about one of these conventions. [Gov.] Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat from New Mexico, and I went to the White House early on to say, by shutting down energy exploration on our federal lands, you’re not slowing down energy consumption,” Gordon explained.
“What you are doing is moving it offshore to places like Venezuela, which is what the president was talking about today, when in Wyoming and in New Mexico, we’ve shown great leadership not only in energy but also in environmental issues. We both have low methane emission, natural gas. I think Wyoming has done the best job in putting out migration corridors. So we know that we can develop our minerals in a place where it’s important for wildlife to be able to move. We can do these things. Give it to the states.”
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Gordon told Fox News Digital that after years of the country’s energy production being “held back,” he is optimistic things will “open up” over the next four years under President Donald Trump and said he is “happy” and “excited” about what he’s seen so far with energy.
“We’re going to start to see growth and production again, but I think what’s really exciting is you have an administration that’s dedicated to putting in place policies that we can make permanent, that recognize that states do it best, recognize that ‘and’ is a much better conjunction than ‘or,’ that we can develop energy, and we can protect the environment, and we can do great things going forward. So, from my standpoint, this is an exciting time and I know my fellow governors and I are very anxious to see what we can get done in these first two years.”
Gordon spoke to Fox News Digital about the new DOGE, which has been dominating headlines in recent weeks, and about his work addressing waste and fraud in Wyoming.
“We’ve worked really hard at cutting waste, and Wyoming has had a few episodes where we’ve lost all our revenue. We’re a dominant energy economy, and so when oil and gas prices drop or coal prices drop, or you have a Biden administration, it’s tough on our state, and that has allowed us, I think, to keep a lot of that waste out. It doesn’t mean we don’t keep looking for it, but there’s just not a lot of fat in our budget. We’re very small and very lean.”
Gordon expressed hope that cutting regulations at the federal level will translate into positive economic growth at the state level.
“At the federal level, there’s a lot of stuff [we] need to fix,” Gordon continued. “We have done a ‘phenomenal’ job of slowing our productivity down by making it so sort of dodgy and slow in the process of going through NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act), and the process of going through the permitting and the process of doing all these things, that a project that ought to take four or five years takes a dozen. That’s not good for our competitiveness.”
“I think when you come in to make a difference, and you start, you know, breaking things and moving fast – just as [DOGE leader] Elon Musk likes to say – there’s going to be a little bit of overdo. I think this administration, some of the conversations we’ve had with some of the secretaries, says, hey, what about this? What are the things that we missed in the process of doing that? So I think we’re seeing some of that get kind of reined back in a little bit more. ‘Is this valuable?’ which is a question we should always ask.”
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