Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Colorado-based oil industry trade group Western Energy Alliance, was named Bureau of Land Management director, a position with wide influence over lands used for energy production, grazing, recreation and other purposes.
If confirmed by the Senate, she would be a key architect of Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” agenda alongside Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who leads the newly formed National Energy Council that Trump says will establish American “energy dominance” around the world.
Burgum ordered reviews of many of Stone-Manning's signature efforts, including fewer oil and gas lease sales, an end to coal leasing in the nation's biggest coal fields, a greater emphasis on conservation and drilling and renewable energy restrictions meant to protect a wide-ranging Western bird, the greater sage grouse.
“Kathleen Sgamma would be an unmitigated disaster for our public lands,” said Taylor McKinnon at the Center for Biological Diversity, adding that Sgamma has “breathtaking disdain for environmental laws, endangered species, recreation, or anything other than industry profit.”.
President Donald Trump has nominated a longtime oil and gas industry representative to oversee an agency that manages a quarter-billion acres of public land concentrated in western states.
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