President Donald Trump has picked an oil and gas industry advocate to head the Bureau of Land Management, which governs the use of around 245 million acres of federal land in the West.
The White House has nominated Kathleen Sgamma, the president of the Denver-based Western Energy Alliance, to be the BLM director, according to Congress.gov. Sgamma’s oil and gas trade group has long advocated for greater industry access to public lands and less regulation of oil and gas and mining interests.
Sgamma is a Massachusetts Institute of Technology-educated political science and policy expert who has never worked for BLM, but has been an unapologetic advocate for oil and gas development on federal land. Her confirmation by the Senate into the position would represent a seismic change in direction for the bureau after the last four years under the Biden administration, during which BLM prioritized developing green energy to combat climate warming.
BLM under the Biden administration was helmed by Tracy Stone-Manning as director and Nada Wolff Culver as principal deputy director. Stone-Manning joined the bureau from the National Wildlife Federation, while Culver came from the National Audubon Society.
