Trump taps oil industry insider to oversee drilling on public lands

President Donald Trump taps oil industry insider Kathleen Sgamma to lead the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management. The agency tasked with managing millions of acres of public lands and waters for the benefit of all Americans.

The nomination of Sgamma, who heads a Denver-based oil and gas industry trade group called the Western Energy Alliance. It heralds a seismic shift in the management of roughly 245 million acres of public property – about one-tenth of the nation’s land mass.

If confirmed by the Senate, she would be a key architect of Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” agenda. This is alongside Interior Secretary and “energy czar” Doug Burgum. An MIT graduate who previously worked in consulting, she has previously advocated for the BLM to prioritize oil and gas drilling, hardrock mining and livestock grazing on public lands nationwide.

A spokesman for Sgamma did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

During his first term, Trump tapped conservative lawyer William Perry Pendley to lead the BLM on an acting basis. But Trump never nominated Pendley, a vocal advocate for selling off public lands, to helm the agency on a permanent basis, prompting a rebuke from a federal judge.

President Joe Biden in 2021 chose Tracy Stone-Manning, a prominent Montana-based environmentalist, to lead the BLM. Earlier in her career, Stone-Manning worked on conservation policy at the National Wildlife Federation and led Montana’s Department of Environmental Quality.

Under Biden, the BLM finalized a landmark rule that sought to put conservation, recreation, and renewable energy development. This is on equal footing with resource extraction on public lands. Sgamma’s Western Energy Alliance filed a lawsuit challenging that rule, which the Trump administration is expected to overturn.

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Source: The Detroit News

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