President Donald Trump has nominated Colorado’s Kathleen Sgamma, 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 have 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 new BLM leasing rules that increased royalty rates, minimum bids, rental rates and bonding requirements 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 May in a 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 the BLM to 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. In addition to overseeing oil and gas development on public lands in the West, Sgamma will be in charge of the BLM’s rules regulating renewable energy installations and the reduction of methane emissions, which are already targets of the Trump administration.
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. In a written statement in January, Sgamma supported Trump’s call to boost liquefied 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 restoring 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 for western Colorado, arguing the acting director was never formally confirmed to run the agency.
Pendley’s Project 2025 plan calls for the BLM headquarters to be returned to Grand Junction, where Trump moved the agency in 2019, from Washington, where it moved under Biden in 2021.
Early Wednesday, shortly after her nomination was announced on congress.gov, environmental groups started blasting Sgamma, a former U.S. Army intelligence officer in the Persian Gulf War and a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“This appointment will hand the keys to our public lands over to oil and gas companies,” said Rachael Hamby, 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.”
Taylor McKinnon, Southwest director at the Center for Biological Diversity, called the nomination “an unmitigated disaster for our public lands. 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.”
Colorado U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert – a Republican representing the 4th Congressional District – applauded Trump’s nomination of Sgamma, saying “she knows our public lands and their untapped resources as well as anyone.”
“I’ve had the opportunity to work closely with her on several efforts to responsibly manage our lands while also allowing our oil and gas industry to thrive and bring back American energy dominance,” Boebert said in a statement. “This is a major win for Coloradans and I look forward to supporting her and her team in any way possible.”
Colorado’s newly elected U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd – a first-time politician and Grand Junction attorney now representing the state’s 3rd Congressional District – said earlier this year that he supported relocating the BLM back to his hometown. In a post on X Wednesday morning he lauded Sgamma as “a strong advocate for reversing harmful regulations that hurt energy production and rural communities.
“I look forward to working with her to undo the damage of the Biden-Harris admin and restore policies that support responsible energy development and public land management,” Hurd wrote on the social media site.
