If confirmed by the Senate, Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, would oversee management of approximately 245 million acres of surface lands. (Source: Shutterstock.com)
President Donald Trump has nominated oil and gas advocate Kathleen Sgamma to lead the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
If confirmed by the Senate, Sgamma would oversee management of approximately 245 million acres of surface lands under newly appointed Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. Sgamma currently serves as president of the Denver-based Western Energy Alliance, an oil and gas advocacy group.
Sgamma has long been a proponent for the oil and gas industry.
In 2021, former President Joe Biden selected Tracey Stone-Manning, a Montana-based environmentalist, to lead the BLM. Under Biden, the BLM ratified a landmark decision to equally prioritize renewable energy development with drilling and resource extraction on federal lands.
Sgamma and the Western Energy Alliance filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration’s onshore oil rules, which included holding smaller, less frequent oil sales.
Sgamma also criticized Biden’s efforts to conserve more public land for recreation and wildlife as a way to control or limit oil and gas activities.
Biden’s restrictions have curtailed future drilling areas in Colorado by tens of thousands of acres and proposed restricting over 2 million acres in southwestern Wyoming. Former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland had also imposed a 20-year ban on new leases near New Mexico's Chaco Culture National Historical Park and prohibited all leasing in the Arctic Ocean.
In an April 2021 Senate hearing on energy development on federal lands, Sgamma testified that in the West, oil and natural gas resources are “inextricably bound to federal public lands and therefore, to the men and women in the industry who work there.”
“As much as we would like to avoid federal lands because of their extensive red tape and time-consuming process, it is nearly impossible to develop oil and natural gas in the West without touching some federal lands or minerals, even when you try to site your development off those federal public lands,” she stated.
Oil advocates applauded Sgamma’s nomination. Independent Petroleum Association of America CEO Jeff Eshelman lauded her understanding of the technical and operational challenges facing E&Ps working on federal lands.
“This knowledge and understanding have been missing for four years, and our national economy, consumers and national security have been put at risk,” Eshelman said in a release.
Environmental groups including the Sierra Club have expressed disapproval of Sgamma’s nomination as it moves Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” agenda ahead.
"Big Oil CEOs already had a friendly face in the White House, and now they have the BLM on speed dial. By naming Sgamma to run BLM, Donald Trump is betraying the American people and threatening our public lands, all to keep the promise he made to the corporate polluters at Big Oil—‘if you raise a billion dollars for me, I'll let you do whatever you want,’” said Athan Manuel, director of Sierra Club’s Lands Protection Program, in a Feb. 12 release.
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