Oil drilling advocate Cathy McMorris Rodgers expected be Trump's pick to head Interior Department

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

POLITICS | Fri Dec 9, 2016 | 12:27pm EST

Oil drilling advocate expected be Trump's pick to head Interior Department: sources

By Ginger Gibson and Valerie Volcovici | WASHINGTON

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is expected to pick U.S. Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a strong advocate of increased oil and gas development who is skeptical about climate change, to run the Department of the Interior, sources briefed on the matter told Reuters on Friday.

The appointment could mean easier access for industry to more than a quarter of America's territory, ranging from national parks to tribal lands stretching from the Arctic to the Gulf of Mexico, where energy companies have been eager to drill and mine.

Three sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that Trump was expected to nominate the congresswoman from Washington state to head the department, which is charged with the management and conservation of federally-owned land and administers programs relating to Native American tribes.

The pick dovetails neatly with the Republican president-elect's promises to bolster the U.S. energy industry by shrinking the powers of the federal government, and follows his nomination earlier this week of an anti-regulation climate skeptic, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, to run the Environmental Protection Agency.

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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-interior-idUSKBN13Y1YV

[madaboutharry]

1. Their next move is to try to break all the treaties

between the U.S. Government and Native American tribes. There is oil in that land and we are now going to witness the government do its best to try and steal it all over again.