Before I link to various news stories, I’d like to raise a few questions from the reporting.
1. The Denver Post story
As head of the BLM, Sgamma, an advocate for oil and gas producers, would manage energy development on public lands, including the U.S. Forest Service.
I don’t think that’s true. Otherwise, why would Mark Rey have told us, when we visited him from the GMUG with an oil and gas leasing decision, “he didn’t want to get a phone call from Dick Cheney.”
2. The Colorado Sun brought up previous director Pendley.
Pendley served as the acting director of the agency for more than a year. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis in 2021 sued the BLM over a Pendley-approved BLM resource management plan for western Colorado, arguing the acting director was never formally confirmed to run the agency.
But Nada Culver, Principal Deputy Director, signed the Rock Springs RMP, as we saw yesterday, and she was never confirmed. So is there some kind of delegation of authority that happened for Culver to sign, but didn’t happen for Pendley to sign? If there are delegations of authority, are they posted on a website so we can follow what’s going on? Hopefully our BLM and lawyer friends will clue us in. And if it’s so easy to delegate authority to the non-confirmed, why didn’t that happen in Trump 1.0?
Anyway, back to the stories:
From Greenwire:
President Donald Trump has picked an oil and gas industry advocate to head the Bureau of Land Management, which governs the use of around 245 million acres of federal land in the West. The White House has nominated Kathleen Sgamma, the president of the Denver-based Western Energy Alliance, to be the BLM director, according to Congress.gov. Sgamma’s oil and gas trade group has long advocated for greater industry access to public lands and less regulation of oil and gas and mining interests.
Sgamma is a Massachusetts Institute of Technology-educated political science and policy expert who has never worked for BLM, but has been an unapologetic advocate for oil and gas development on federal land. Her confirmation by the Senate into the position would represent a seismic change in direction for the bureau after the last four years under the Biden administration, during which BLM prioritized developing green energy to combat climate warming.
BLM under the Biden administration was helmed by Tracy Stone-Manning as director and Nada Wolff Culver as principal deputy director. Stone-Manning joined the bureau from the National Wildlife Federation, while Culver came from the National Audubon Society.
Sgamma’s nomination is consistent with Trump’s campaign pledge to tap the nation’s vast oil and natural gas reserves — what he has called the “liquid gold” beneath the ground — and to “drill, baby, drill,” as he put it on Inauguration Day last month.
BLM oversees more than 700 million acres of subsurface mineral estate.
Sgamma declined to discuss the matter when reached for comment late Tuesday. An Interior Department spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
The Western Energy Alliance, which Sgamma joined in 2006, supports not only Trump’s plans to increase oil and gas production on public lands, but also unwinding the Biden administration’s restrictions.
Moving from being an advocate to a decision-maker, Sgamma would bring more than 18 years of experience and a detailed understanding of the legal and regulatory mechanics of what it takes to sink a drill bit into BLM land.
Sgamma, and the Western Energy Alliance group she heads, has her fingers on a number of lawsuits and issues currently impacting BLM.
One of the biggest is a federal lawsuit before the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah that challenges one of the Biden BLM’s signature initiatives, the public lands rule, which places conservation on par with oil and gas drilling, grazing, and other uses.
Sgamma served as an adviser during the first Trump administration on an efficiency group, called the Royalty Policy Committee, that debated a wide range of ideas, including streamlining the permitting and review process for drilling on public land. The committee disbanded with many of its potential reforms not implemented.
Sgamma is also a regular witness before numerous congressional committees, often invited by the Republican chairs of the various groups.
Sgamma has long argued the GOP mantra that oil and gas can be produced cleaner in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world, in large part due to the vast bureaucratic network of rules and regulations governing drilling activity on federal lands.
I thought this story was interesting in that it points out that Sgamma has never worked for the BLM. So I guess I’m asking whether any Director has ever worked for the BLM? Also I’m not sure that Scott needed to add “GOP mantra” to the last sentence. Isn’t it enough to “argue that oil and gas can be produced cleaner.”
It’s actually an interesting question. Alberta did this study, but Alberta came out fairly high so there’s that.
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From the Colorado Sun:
Early Wednesday, shortly after her nomination was announced on congress.gov, environmental groups started blasting Sgamma, a former U.S. Army intelligence officer in the Persian Gulf War and a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“This appointment will hand the keys to our public lands over to oil and gas companies,” said Rachael Hamby, the policy director of the Center for Western Priorities in a statement. “Sgamma will seek to lease every inch of our lands for drilling, no matter their recreational, scenic, ecological or cultural value. Her appointment is a direct threat to Western communities and wildlife that depend on healthy landscapes, clean air, and clean water.”
Taylor McKinnon, Southwest director at the Center for Biological Diversity, called the nomination “an unmitigated disaster for our public lands. She’s a fossil fuel industry hack with breathtaking disdain for environmental laws, endangered species, recreation or anything other than industry profits. It’s hard to imagine how Trump could give a bigger middle finger to America’s public lands. Everyone who treasures the outdoors should oppose her nomination.”
With all due respect to Hamby and her hyperbole, they are not interested in leasing “every inch” because.. there isn’t oil and gas under every inch. Also, in news stories on RMPs, I seem to remember folks arguing that all the best areas had already been leased, so stopping leasing wouldn’t have an impact.
Who else is old enough to remember James Watt, Reagan’s Interior Secretary? He was head of a legal foundation if I recall.
Funny thing is, Watt was a great member recruiting tool for the Sierra Club!
Sgamma may be like Watt in that regard.
I do use gas for my car and it needs to come from somewhere. I replaced an old oil furnace w/ a heat pump – Great decision especially given heat domes in Oregon in recent summers.
I use some fossil fuels but, for me, public lands hold many other more important values!
We can greatly improve energy efficiency, regardless of which source is being used, and convert more to renewable energy.
High quality drinking water from public lands is something there are few substitutes for.
IMO Water is more important than gasoline.
She’ll be confirmed because the Senate is just a rubber stamp these days.
Let’s see what happens.
Dear OldWoodsman,
Yes, I remember Interior Secretary James Watt and especially his resignation. I happened to be on the same airplane, when he departed Santa Barbara after a stay at President Reagan’s ranch. Watt was certainly a lightening rod in those days.
Those were better times, because top government officials actually thought for themselves and did not automatically vote a party line. Today, just about every top official sings the same tune, the same party line. Democrats refuse to help President Trump, and Republicans return the favor by voting as a block, just as Democrats did under Joe Biden.
As a scientist, I wish everyone would realize the value of fossil fuels, not merely for the energy they provide but for the carbon dioxide as well. More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere means far better growing conditions for forests and food crops. The magnificent experiments of Sherwood Idso demonstrated this conclusively for pines. And every tomato farmer who grows crops in greenhouses realizes that more CO2 means better crops. Even I notice that my house plants love enhanced CO2 from a propane space heater that I use.
With only 400 ppm of CO2 in outside air, we are far from the optimum level of about 1500 ppm and very far from the level of 2500 ppm reached 140 million years ago. Even with a slow increase from our burning of fossil fuels, we are still uncomfortably close to the ‘death zone,’ below 200 ppm where life starts to vanish on this planet, as it did at the end of the last Ice Age.
Very few people realize that the tiny amount of CO2 in our atmosphere (0.04%) is entirely responsible for life on this planet, with help from water and sunlight. And the minor warming from slightly more CO2 is very helpful too. Should the Global Temperature Anomaly sink by just one degree C, major food crops grown in Canada could be in jeopardy.
Wheat is native to the Middle East, not Canada. The French found this out when crops repeatedly failed and their aristocracy failed to follow the German lead and grow more cold tolerant crops. The moral of this story is “Don’t lose your head over climate change.”
Gordon J. Fulks, PhD (Physics)
Corbett, Oregon USA
As I recall, BLM manages all onshore federal oil and gas activities. However, it does so in conjunction with the relevant surface management agency, usually the FS and occasionally FWS, if the o&g activity is not on BLM lands.
Oh, OK, I get that.. “manages” is a shorthand for being lead on activities post the oil and gas leasing decision. I was more in the weeds of the steps where the FS “regulates”, I guess, not manages.
I assume everything we wrote in this Colorado Roadless document is accurate when it describes the processes:
You can just read through the Roadless references. It’s the same process.
FS and BLM have conducted environmental analyses, with public participation, for oil and gas leasing on NFS lands in Colorado, including lands in roadless areas.
• In implementing leasing decisions based on those analyses, BLM forwarded lease parcels nominated by industry to FS for review before offering parcels for sale in roadless areas.
FS verified that the lands included in lease parcels had been adequately addressed in a NEPA document and were consistent with applicable leasing decisions and forests plans.
Also BLM manages federal mineral estate, including under National Forest System (NFS) lands. BLM offers, sells, and issues federal oil and gas leases. BLM makes the final decision on activities
pursuant to oil and gas leases subject to FS approval of the Surface Use Plan of Operations (SUPO) component of the Application for Permit to Drill (APD) (drilling permit).
In other words, all existing oil and gas leases in roadless areas were offered for sale consistent with forest plans and oil and gas leasing decisions.
Forest Service (FS) has authority and responsibility to identify lands available for leasing and to identify terms (stipulations) to be included in oil and gas leases on National Forest System lands.
• FS has authority to regulate all surface-disturbing activities conducted pursuant to a federal oil and gas lease on NFS lands. Operators are required to conduct operations on a leasehold on National
Forest System lands in a manner that minimizes effects on surface resources, prevents unnecessary or unreasonable surface resource disturbance, and that is in compliance with the other applicable
requirements.
Yes, this all looks good!
You are correct. BLM manages all onshore oil and gas no matter which agency – USFS, Bureau of Reclamation, etc.— manages the federal surface. (Also manages federal oil and gas under fee surface “split estate” lands.) The mineral leasing law specifically gives USFS “consent authority” and BLM leasing regulations do the same for other “surface management agencies.” See 43 CFR 3101.7. What Mark Rey was referring to was his exercise of the FS consent to leasing. Without FS consent BLM couldn’t lease. He might then have received the call from VP Cheney
Of course, being a surface management agency retiree, I would focus on the surface management agency authorities :), consenting, regulating and so on.
Exactly. I can imagine a situation where either the forest plan language was unclear regarding the availability of a given parcel for leasing, or where there were some disagreements between BLM and FS as to the appropriate surface use restrictions. I’m guessing that what Mark was saying to the FS was, in effect, “resolve ambiguities in favor of BLM.”
But my point was that I don’t remember BLM actually weighing in on the discussion..nor did they weigh in for our coal mine decisions, although their solicitors and NEPA and minerals folks helped us as we needed. My impression (Colorado and Wyoming State Offices) was that BLM had enough work with their own surface, and enough of their own issues, that our surface was always our call. While I was involved in interagency mediation with EPA and COE, I never experienced that with BLM.
Aside: I am definitely not a “put FS in Interior” person, but some meetings with BLM and FS minerals, NEPA and solicitors and OGC, the room got pretty crowded!
The pendulum is swinging (finally) and try as they might, the left will stay in the slow lane for the next 4 – maybe 8 more years. Working in the Planning shop in Region 2, oil and gas and coal was a big deal! I learned a lot; I’d learned from the local exploration companies in the South, in drilling on FS lands, and on our own private lands.
Some of the pipelines that were installed years ago, are no longer visible, can’t tell them from pasture – or timber! Same for producing wells. Time will tell, the energy industry has learned from its past mistakes and as for CBD? Well, that’s CBD…..
Bob Abbey and Cy Jamison previously worked for BLM before becoming the Director. There may have been others, but the nominee is usually someone without BLM experience.
Jim Caswell also worked for the BLM before going over to the USFS.
That reminds me of the Caswell quotes in this E&E News story”All BLM directors have ‘baggage.’ Is Biden’s pick’s too much?” https://www.eenews.net/articles/all-blm-directors-have-baggage-is-bidens-pick-too-much/
Same old tired arguments.
Elections have consequences.
If the Democrats win in 2028 or 2032, the government will agree with such rhetoric as “every square inch of land is sacred to Indigenous people, every parcel of land is uniquely ecologically fragile, we need to stop using fossil fuels in five years or the planet is doomed, and stop driving, flying, and using your gas stove.”
If the Republicans win in 2028 or 2032, it will be “drill baby drill.”
Fortunately, economic forces are steadily converting the world to clean energy, no matter what various timeworn ideologies may have in mind.
Do you consider nuclear “clean”?
Yes, also solar and wind, although any energy source will always have complications and drawbacks.
Some self-styled environmentalists oppose all three, for romantic reasons.
Thanks for asking!
Hi Lourenco: Do you consider firewood as “green energy?”
I wasn’t sure, so I checked and found this:
“The debate is not clear-cut. Burning wood may be close to carbon-neutral in some situations, such as where it is clear that cut trees are replaced with the same trees, one for one; but in others it can emit even more carbon than coal.”
https://e360.yale.edu/features/carbon-loophole-why-is-wood-burning-counted-as-green-energy
They know more than I do, and their statements sounds reasonable.
Hi Lourenco: The primary reason this statement sounds unreasonable to me is the idea that managing trees for carbon retention seems about the same as managing the ocean for salt content. I think it’s a fool’s errand and taxpayers have been sold a bridge. Otherwise, for the carbon storage people, I would argue that trees will store carbon longer when converted to building materials, rather than dying and rotting in place — and particularly if death is caused by wildfire.
The problem with the Yale folks (and most of the broader discussion) is that they are talking about certain situations and not others. I discussed that here.
https://forestpolicypub.com/2020/12/16/talking-past-each-other-on-forest-carbon-differing-questions-asked-and-alternatives-considered/
Thanks, Bob and Sharon. I’m sure you’re right. This is beyond my area of expertise and if Bob hadn’t asked I wouldn’t have ventured an (uninformed) opinion. A little knowledge etc.
A proposed data center and crypto mine in Montana will need terawatts so that industry is erasing protections for public lands for coal extraction is hardly a surprise. Black Hills Energy is already selling coal-fired power to a facility in Wyoming. And if South Dakota had a Democratic attorney general she’d sue Montana and Wyoming for the toxic legacy created by Colstrip, Basin Electric and Black Hills Energy. In 2020 Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison sued ExxonMobil, Koch Industries and the American Petroleum Institute for lying to residents of that state.
Missoulian article is behind a paywall.
https://missoulian.com/news/local/business/data-centers/article_acbd30be-e890-11ef-bebd-e366034a834c.html
Regarding who has authority to make decisions, I’ll quote you from an earlier discussion: “You would have to know all the ins and outs of the approval regulations, which (Thank Gaia!) I do not.” https://forestpolicypub.com/2020/10/17/judge-opens-door-to-lawsuits-challenging-pendley-decisions-spanning-30-million-acres-of-public-land/