Trump picks oil and gas advocate from Colorado to lead Bureau of Land Management

President Donald Trump has nominated Colorado’s Kathleen Sgamma, the head of Western Energy Alliance, an oil and gas trade group, to run the Bureau of Land Management. 

Sgamma, a Denver resident, has been the head of the Western Energy Alliance since 2006, working to protect the interests of oil and gas producers amid an international embrace of cleaner energies. Sgamma and the Western Energy Alliance has been a vocal critic of former President Joe Biden’s increased regulation of the oil and gas industry. 

The alliance last year joined petroleum associations in New Mexico, North Dakota, Wyoming and Utah in a lawsuit challenging the BLM’s new leasing rules that increased the royalties rates, minimum bids, rental rates and bonding requirement for companies drilling for oil and gas on federal  land. 

“This is another rule by the Biden administration meant to deliver on the president’s promise of no federal oil and natural gas,” Sgamma said in a May 2024 statement announcing the lawsuit. (Sgamma on Wednesday referred all inquiries to the White House.)

The BLM manages 245 million surface acres and 700 million acres of underground minerals, balancing energy development, livestock grazing, mining and timber harvesting with recreation and wildlife habitat. In 2023, the Biden administration required that the BLM must consider land conservation alongside energy development and recreation.

That new conservation-focused rule was of particular interest in Colorado, where the BLM manages 8.3 million acres of public lands, including 27 million acres of mineral estate with programs that generate $9 billion in economic activity that supports 41,000 jobs. 

Colorado’s oil and gas work on BLM land generates $6.1 billion, compared to $1.4 billion from recreation. 

Sgamma in January cheered Trump’s Unleashing American Energy executive order, which expanded energy exploration and production  on  federal land and eliminated incentives for electric vehicles and energy-efficient appliances. Sgamma, in a January statement, supported Trump’s call to boost liquified natural gas exports and reduce the “regulatory damage” from the Biden administration’s increased regulation of oil and gas leasing on public land.

Sgamma wrote the energy section of the 900-page Project 2025 “Mandate for Leadership” plan. Her chapter inside the document was titled “Restoring American Energy Dominance” and called for rolling back Biden regulations and reinstalling oil, gas and mining leases in Alaska, Wyoming and Montana where leases had been suspended. 

Evergreen oil and gas attorney William Perry Pendley — a conservative who advocates for the federal government to sell some public lands — penned the Project 2025 section addressing proposed changes to the Interior Department. Trump in 2020 said he intended to nominate Pendley to head the BLM. Pendley served as the acting director of the agency for more than a year. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis in 2021 sued the BLM over a Pendley-approved BLM resource management plan in western Colorado, arguing the acting director was never formally confirmed to run the agency. 

Pendley’s Project 2025 plan called for the BLM to relocate its Washington D.C. headquarters back to Grand Junction, where Trump moved the agency in 2019 but Biden returned to the capital in 2021.

Early Wednesday, shortly after Sgamma’s nomination was announced on congress.gov, environmental groups started blasting Sgamma.

“This appointment will hand the keys to our public lands over to oil and gas companies,” said Rachael Hamby, the policy director of the Center for Western Priorities in a statement. “Sgamma will seek to lease every inch of our lands for drilling, no matter their recreational, scenic, ecological, or cultural value. Her appointment is a direct threat to Western communities and wildlife that depend on healthy landscapes, clean air, and clean water.” 

“Kathleen Sgamma would be an unmitigated disaster for our public lands,” said Taylor McKinnon, Southwest director at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement. “She’s a fossil fuel industry hack with breathtaking disdain for environmental laws, endangered species, recreation, or anything other than industry profits. It’s hard to imagine how Trump could give a bigger middle finger to America’s public lands. Everyone who treasures the outdoors should oppose her nomination. If Sgamma’s confirmed, we’ll fight her attacks on public lands and wildlife at every step.”

This is a breaking news story that will be updated.