The Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee voted largely along party lines Wednesday morning to advance President Donald Trump’s nominees for under-secretary of energy as well as director of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) .
Both Trump nominees Kyle Haustveit for under secretary of energy as well as Steve Pearce for BLM were passed out of committee in 11-to-9 votes.
Pearce is a former Republican Congressman from New Mexico whose district included the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP).
Pearce was nominated in January to lead BLM, which oversees federally-owned public land. But the ex-Congressman was opposed by Sen. Martin Heinrich, a fellow New Mexican who is the top Democrat on the panel. Heinrich disagrees with some of the public lands positions that Pearce took in the House of Representatives.
Haustveit is a professional petroleum engineer and former assistant secretary of energy for fossil fuels, also advanced to the full Senate floor for a vote at a later date. If confirmed as under secretary of energy, he would replace prior Trump appointee Preston Wells Griffith, who reportedly was forced to resign from the Department of Energy last fall.
This week Griffith was nominated to be a State Department representative to the International Atomic Energy Association.