President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Land Management has plenty of experience with the federal agency — including at the helm of lawsuits that accuse it of trying to restrict oil and gas drilling on public lands.
Kathleen Sgamma has served as president of the Western Energy Alliance for nearly two decades as the organization has become a leader in litigation pushing for more fossil fuel production on public lands across the West.
The alliance, which represents oil and gas producers in Western states, has been active in lawsuits that have challenged efforts to protect a Western prairie bird and the Biden administration’s pause on leasing public lands. It also joined a coalition of Republican attorneys general to fight a Biden administration environmental, social and governance initiative.
While oil and gas interests welcomed Sgamma’s appointment as a determined advocate for their industry, green groups said they feared she would side with energy producers.
In a statement following her nomination, Sgamma acknowledged the agency has to balance multiple uses of public lands, including energy, recreation, grazing, mining and stewardship.
“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 last week.
Tim Stewart, president of the U.S. Oil & Gas Association, called Sgamma the most qualified BLM nominee he’s seen in 30 years, noting she knows the agency’s portfolio from wild burros to oil and gas.
Sgamma has been the “tip of the spear” on public lands policy, not just for the industry, he said.
“She knows how to build coalitions made up of multiple user groups,” Stewart said. “There have been times when those coalitions have had to push back legally against [Department of the Interior] overreach. This is evidence that she knows how to assemble and organize our industry plus united recreation users, cattlemen, counties and other public lands users to reach a consensus.”
If confirmed, Sgamma would need to recuse herself from action related to litigation brought by the alliance, John Pelissero, the director of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, said in an email.
“And she would be wise to not act on any future [alliance] issues to avoid creating the appearance of a conflict of interest,” Pelissero wrote. “Her role at the BLM would be to always act in the public interest, attending to the ethical standard of promoting the common good.”
Neither Sgamma nor the White House responded to requests for comment.
The BLM nominee would be far from the first federal official to tangle with an agency in court before taking on a leadership role.
Mark Squillace, a natural resources law professor at the University of Colorado School of Law, said it was “troubling but not so uncommon” to see former opponents of the agency later take on leadership roles there.
Before he became acting BLM director under the first Trump administration, William Perry Pendley was president of the Mountain States Legal Foundation for nearly 30 years.
While at the foundation, Pendley represented the oil and gas company Solenex against BLM in an unsuccessful battle to drill on land in Montana sacred to the Blackfeet Nation.
Squillace, a former Interior official, also pointed to an example from early in his career as an attorney at Interior.
A Virginia official, Steve Griles, who had led the state’s challenge to the constitutionality of the federal Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, later became the deputy director of the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, which was responsible for implementing the law.
“I recall that shortly after he became the OSM Deputy Director, the Supreme Court handed down a unanimous decision upholding” the law that Giles had challenged, Squillace said in an email. “One of my colleagues called Griles to tell him that we won the case. ‘No,’ he replied, ‘We lost.'”
Trump’s energy agenda
Sgamma’s nomination comes as Trump has pledged to boost U.S. energy production and expand access to public lands for fossil fuel and mineral leasing.
National Mining Association President and CEO Rich Nolan praised Sgamma for her “deep and essential understanding of the Western states, as well as public lands, energy development and mining issues.”
“We look forward to working with the BLM to restore balance to the agency’s approach to conservation and natural resource production — the two can responsibly proceed together and, once confirmed, we believe she will work to ensure our public lands are fully protected and utilized responsibly,” Nolan said.
But environmental groups that had often been on the opposite side of the courtroom from the Western Energy Alliance in public lands disputes said that her nomination would prove a “blatant giveaway to polluters.”
The Natural Resources Defense Council cited Sgamma’s record of litigation to ask whether she will protect public lands for conservation and recreation, noting BLM land is also used for hunting, fishing and hiking — not just extraction of resources.
“As an industry insider who sued to block conservation efforts, it is safe to wonder if Sgamma will address all those important uses, which address the needs of all Americans — not just fossil fuel CEOs,” said Andrew Wetzler, the group’s senior vice president for nature.
Taylor McKinnon, the Southwest director of the Center for Biological Diversity, noted the Western Energy Alliance had been involved in suits including challenges to federal regulations and administrative procedures, and had reliably opposed any policies that would constrain oil and gas development.
“Under Sgamma’s purview, the Western Energy Alliance has been a ubiquitous and long-standing opponent of any public lands policy that would protect nature or potentially impede oil and gas industry profits,” McKinnon said.
“She’s the Cruella De Vil of public lands,” he added.
BLM litigation and beyond
The Western Energy Alliance has a long history of litigation under Sgamma.
Much of the litigation focuses on oil and gas lease sales. The trade group claims to have defended nearly every lease sold on public lands since 2015.
One of those cases is a yearslong fight over how much the federal government should be shielding the habitat for greater sage grouse from oil and gas development. In January, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found in part that a lower court improperly tossed out hundreds of leases for an inadequate National Environmental Policy Act review. Other parts of the litigation remain ongoing.
The Western Energy Alliance also touted its win last year in defending the environmental reviews for six lease sales.
“With that ruling, the [greenhouse gas] analysis BLM used enables thousands of other leases and new drilling permits to move forward,” the alliance stated on its website.
Under Sgamma, the alliance’s targets extended beyond disputes over the use of public land.
The trade group joined the American Forest Resource Council in a “friend of the court” brief before the Supreme Court in a pending case, Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, calling for more limited NEPA reviews. That case could reshape how agencies, including BLM, conduct environmental reviews.
And the alliance in 2023 joined an effort led by Republican state attorneys general to challenge a Biden administration Labor Department rule that elevated environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors in returns for retirees and workers.
The challengers argued that the 2022 rule, drafted under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, would limit financing for oil and gas projects.
Sgamma argued at the time that data showed that ESG investing is “highly politicized and delivers lower returns.” She charged that DOL’s rule would cause retirees and employees to end up with lower retirement incomes “all for purposes of a one-sided political agenda.”
After the Supreme Court last June overturned the Chevron doctrine that gave deference to federal agencies, Sgamma said the case was “looking kind of like a slam dunk” for her group and the red states.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last July sent the case back to a lower court that had upheld the rule, citing the death of the Chevron deference. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas had invoked the decades-old Chevron doctrine when he upheld the DOL rule in September 2023.
Liberty Energy, the Denver-based fracking company that at the time was owned by Trump Energy Secretary Chris Wright, also joined the lawsuit against the Labor Department.
Wright, who was on the board of the Western Energy Alliance, was the first to file suit against a 2024 Securities and Exchange Commission rule that would have required public companies to disclose the effects of climate change on their finances, operations and business strategy.
The Trump administration signaled last week that it will abandon the climate rule, with the acting chair of the commission calling it “deeply flawed.”
Sgamma welcomed Wright’s nomination in December, telling POLITICO’s E&E News that of the thousands of companies affected by the SEC rule, Wright was one of just two leaders to step forward and mount a challenge.
“The country is well served when federal agencies stick to their statutory authority rather than trying to grab new power through regulations,” Sgamma said. “Chris understands the role of federal agencies and the rule of law.”
This story also appears in Climatewire.
