Colorado oil and gas lobbyist to lead BLM

The head of a Denver-based oil and gas trade group that lobbies for expanded drilling on public lands is President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

Kathleen Sgamma is the president of Western Energy Alliance, which represents independent oil and gas producers who operate in nine western states. In that role, she has been a leading opponent of efforts by conservation groups and public lands managers to restrict oil and gas drilling on federally-owned public lands, including the 245 million acres administered by the BLM. (Editor’s note: In Colorado, the BLM manages 8.3 million acres of public lands, most of which are concentrated on the Western Slope.)

Sgamma’s nomination to lead the agency was published in the Congressional Record late on Feb. 11, though no formal announcement had yet been made by the White House. Environmental groups were quick to denounce her nomination as a sign that the Trump administration “will hand the keys to our public lands over to oil and gas companies.”

“Sgamma will seek to lease every inch of our lands for drilling, no matter their recreational, scenic, ecological, or cultural value,” Rachael Hamby, policy director for the Center for Western Priorities, said in a statement. “Her appointment is a direct threat to Western communities and wildlife that depend on healthy landscapes, clean air, and clean water.”

U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Windsor Republican, called Sgamma’s selection a “major win for Coloradans.”

“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 press release.

Sgamma was the author of a section on energy policy in Project 2025, a controversial blueprint for the incoming Trump administration produced by the conservative Heritage Foundation. The plan calls for sweeping rollbacks of Biden-era public lands policies and a return to Trump’s “energy dominance agenda” by expanding oil and gas lease sales, expediting drilling permits and cutting the royalties and fees that producers must pay to extract publicly-owned resources.

The plan specifically calls for reversing the lease withdrawal of 220,000 acres of national forest land along the Thompson Divide on Colorado’s Western Slope. This was a move that Sgamma and Western Energy Alliance lobbied against along with similar protections for areas including Chaco Cultural Historic National Park in New Mexico, and the Boundary Waters area in northern Minnesota.

(Editor’s note: Mt. Emmons, locally known as the Red Lady, was included in the recent Thompson Divide withdrawal. Recent reporting in the Feb. 14 edition of the Crested Butte News said the Red Lady should remain protected from future mining endeavors “due to the complexity of the agreements made between the Mt. Emmons Mining Company, the local governments and the Crested Butte Land Trust.)

Sgamma joins another Denver-based oil and gas advocate, newly confirmed Energy Secretary Chris Wright, as a key appointee in the Trump administration. Wright, former CEO of oilfield services company Liberty Energy, has served as a member of Western Energy Alliance’s board of directors since 2020. He was the recipient of the group’s “Wildcatter of the Year” award in 2022.

During Trump’s first term, the Bureau of Land Management’s headquarters were moved to Grand Junction as part of a controversial “reorganization” of the agency. Project 2025 calls for the agency’s headquarters to be returned to the West, a move that it describes as “the epitome of good governance.”

(Chase Woodruff is a senior reporter for Colorado Newsline. His beats include the environment, money in politics, and the economy. Colorado Newsline is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

Read the full story at coloradonewsline.com.)