BILLINGS, Mont. — President Donald Trump has nominated a longtime oil and gas industry representative to oversee an agency that manages a quarter-billion acres of public land concentrated in western states.
Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Colorado-based oil industry trade group Western Energy Alliance, was named Bureau of Land Management director, a position with wide influence over lands used for energy production, grazing, recreation and other purposes. An MIT graduate, Sgamma has been a leading voice for the fossil fuel industry, calling for fewer drilling restrictions on public lands that produce about 10% of U.S. oil and gas.
If confirmed by the Senate, she would be a key architect of Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” agenda alongside Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who leads the newly formed National Energy Council that Trump says will establish American “energy dominance” around the world. Trump has vowed to boost U.S. oil and gas drilling and move away from President Joe Biden’s focus on climate change.
Former Interior Secretary David Bernhardt relocated the land bureau’s headquarters to Colorado during Trump’s first term, leading to a spike in employee resignations. The bureau went four years under Trump without a confirmed director.
The headquarters for the 10,000-person agency was moved back to Washington, D.C. under Biden, who installed Montana conservationist Traci Stone-Manning at the bureau to lead his administration’s efforts to curb oil and gas production in the name of fighting climate change.
Sgamma will be charged with reversing those policies, by putting into effect a series of orders issued last week by Burgum as part of Trump’s plan to sharply expand fossil fuel production.
Burgum ordered reviews of many of Stone-Manning’s signature efforts, including fewer oil and gas lease sales, an end to coal leasing in the nation’s biggest coal fields, a greater emphasis on conservation and drilling and renewable energy restrictions meant to protect a wide-ranging Western bird, the greater sage grouse. Burgum also ordered federal officials to review and c onsider redrawing the boundaries of national monuments that were created under Biden and other presidents to protect unique landscapes and cultural resources.
Sgamma said on social media she was honored to be nominated.
She said she greatly respects the agency’s work to balance multiple uses for public lands — including energy, recreation, grazing and mining — with stewardship of the land. “I look forward to leading an agency that is key to the agenda of unleashing American energy while protecting the environment,” she wrote on LinkedIn.
But environmentalists warned that Sgamma would elevate corporate interests over protections for public land.
“Kathleen Sgamma would be an unmitigated disaster for our public lands,” said Taylor McKinnon at the Center for Biological Diversity, adding that Sgamma has “breathtaking disdain for environmental laws, endangered species, recreation, or anything other than industry profit.”
Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon said Sgamma’s nomination was an “excellent choice.”
“I know she is well-qualified and knowledgeable when it comes to Wyoming, the West, and multiple use of public lands,” Gordon, a Republican, said in a statement.
Trump nominated Brian Nesvik to lead the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which also is under the Interior Department and helps recover imperiled species and protect their habitat.
Nesvik until last year led the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, where he pushed to remove federal protections for grizzly bears. That would open the door to public hunting for the first time in decades after the animals bounced back from near-extinction last century in the northern U.S. Rocky Mountains.
The Biden administration in its last days extended protections for more than 2,000 grizzly bears in and around Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks, a move that was blasted by Republican officials in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana.
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Daly reported from Washington.