President-elect Donald Trump’s decisions to nominate Chris Wright for secretary of energy and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum to serve a duel role as secretary of the interior and chairman of a National Energy Council are reassuring.

Wright is the CEO of a company with considerable experience in natural gas drilling. We believe Burgum, as governor of a largely pro-development state, is an ideal choice to spearhead a comprehensive effort to improve the production and affordability of domestic energy — an effort that includes renewable sources such as solar, wind and hydroelectric power and conventional sources such as natural gas and oil.

As an Associated Press report in Saturday’s edition of the Sun-Gazette acknowledged, natural gas development contributes to our nation’s economy and employment opportunities — a reality we know quite well in our region.

“Oil and gas brings billions of dollars of revenue in, but you don’t get that if you don’t have leasing,” Erik Milito of the National Ocean Industries Association told the AP’s reporters.

As the staff of National Review, a political commentary and news website and magazine, recently noted in assessing these cabinet choices, domestic greenhouse-gas emissions have fallen since 2005 — a trend that owes much to a shift to cleaner natural gas.

“Wright will be attacked as anti-environment, yet by making natural gas more plentiful as a replacement for coal in electricity generation, fracking has helped the environment more than every road-blocking protest and project-blocking lawsuit from the green movement combined,” the commentary from the National Review correctly observes.

We hope Secretaries-designate Wright and Burgum are successful in explaining these realities to legislators and the American people, and we hope their appointments can signify a renaissance of all-of-the-above energy policy that creates jobs, provides lower bills to families and businesses and fosters confidence in voters about America’s future.