Oil and Gas Companies on Trump Nominee’s Board of Directors Paid $93 Million in Penalties
As a co-author of Project 2025, Kathleen Sgamma to pave way for rampant exploitation of America’s national public lands for private profit
WASHINGTON, D.C. — As President Donald Trump’s nominee to run the federal Bureau of Land Management heads to the Senate today for her confirmation hearing, a new report details the oil-soaked track record of Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, an oil and gas trade group.
Sgamma, who worked at the Colorado-based group for nearly 20 years, has a history of extreme statements, minimizing climate change and ignoring the environmental harms of oil and gas drilling. The report found more than $93 million in fines and legal settlements paid since 2020 by companies represented on the Western Energy Alliance’s board — companies that will be under Sgamma’s supervision in her new position. More than 90% of those fines were for environmental violations, the report found.
“If Sgamma is confirmed, oil and gas companies will have the closest of friends in office to respond to every industry wish,” said Alan Zibel, research director with Public Citizen and author of the report. “The law requires the government to balance multiple uses of federal lands, and protect natural resources. But under Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, aided by Sgamma and others, the government will do the bidding of dirty energy corporations at every step, and turn over national public lands to the private sector for maximum profit.
Sgamma was one of the small group of authors for Project 2025’s chapter on the Interior Department, a document that claims the Biden administration declared a “war on fossil fuels” — ignoring the record setting production of U.S. crude oil and natural gas during Biden’s presidency. Sgamma has repeatedly downplayed the economic threat posed by global climate catastrophe, claiming that “The ‘cure’ to climate change being proposed from the Left is worse than the problem.”
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