As a vocal advocate for oil and gas operators on public lands, Kathleen Sgamma has repeatedly laid out her views on some of the key issues the Bureau of Land Management is expected to take up in the first few months of the Trump administration.
If the Senate confirms her nomination as the bureau’s next director, Sgamma will go from sidelines proponent to major player in pushing forward President Donald Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda.
The priorities Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has already identified for BLM could lead to a reversal of some of the Biden administration’s most ambitious initiatives on public lands. These included a sweeping public lands rule that put conservation on the same level as other uses of federal rangelands; updating land-use plans that restricted oil and gas drilling; and the halting of new coal mine leases across millions of acres in Wyoming, Colorado and Montana.
There’s also the potential reconsideration of where exactly BLM’s national headquarters should be located. In Washington, as former President Joe Biden’s Interior leadership determined was best? Or in Sgamma’s home state of Colorado, where Trump moved it during his first term in office?
