Hearing Watch: Big Oil Insider & Project 2025 Architect Kathleen Sgamma Interviews for Chance to Pillage Public Lands for Industry Profit

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources will hold its confirmation hearing for Kathleen Sgamma, President Trump’s nominee for Director of the Bureau of Land Management under the Department of the Interior. In the latest case of the President picking the proverbial fox to guard the henhouse, Sgamma is a decades-long big oil insider who co-authored Project 2025’s chapter on energy policy that has been called a how-to manual for turning millions of acres of public lands into a ‘playground for extractive industries’.   

An Accountable.US report documents some of the lowest moments in Sgamma’s career as executive for Western Energy Alliance – a trade and lobby group that aggressively opposes public lands protections through litigation, lobbying, and PR campaigns. Sgamma spread unsubstantiated claims that the industry’s effect on climate change is “infinitesimal,” that that the cause of the Bundy family’s armed takeover of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge was “too much federal ownership of land”, and that Russia would win if the industry is not allowed to drill near sites sacred to Native American tribes.  Sgamma will be in good company with Trump Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and  Deputy Secretary of the Interior Department nominee Katharine MacGregor, who are also concerningly cozy with the oil industry and other big polluters. 

“With oil insider Kathleen Sgamma tapped to oversee America’s cherished public lands, the big polluter lobby continues to get a huge return on their investment after making record high donations to President Trump’s campaign,” said Accountable.US Executive Director Tony Carrk. “The more oil industry insiders the President installs in his administration, the more their lobbyists will get to write their own rules and pillage whatever public land they please in pursuit of maximum profits. Meanwhile, working Americans will have less and less say in government decisions that threaten clean air, water, and public lands, while they pay more and more at the pump – just as Project 2025 planned it.” 

Project 2025 and Trump Agenda are One and the Same: Sgamma joins alumni that Donald Trump tapped to serve in top posts in his administration despite distancing himself from the effort on the campaign trail. A review from Accountable.US found that the Trump administration took up nearly 20 Project 2025 mandates in just its first few weeks.

Accountable.US joined 126 organizations in signing a letter to the Committee opposing Kathleen Sgamma’s nomination for BLM Director.

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