DENVER – Western Energy Alliance announced Kim Rodell as the new chair of the board of directors. Rodell is president of Upstream Petroleum Management, a woman-owned small business helping oil and natural gas companies navigate complex regulatory policies and permitting processes. She will serve as the association’s chair until August 2022.
With Rodell’s assumption as chair of the board and Kathleen Sgamma as president since 2016, the top leaders at the Alliance are now women. Previous women who have led the association include Laura Skaer, chair of the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States (now Western Energy Alliance) from 1991-1992, and Christine Kennedy, chair in 1996. Sgamma is the second woman to serve as president/executive director, and Karyn Plank Grass was executive director from 1990 to 2000. Today, the Alliance’s staff is 60 percent women. DENVER – Western Energy Alliance today denounced the Department of the Interior’s intention to slow walk onshore lease sales. The Department clearly states in the brief that no sales will be held in 2021. It will only manage to publish a sales notice sometime in December, meaning sales cannot take place until January or February. The Mineral Leasing Act requires quarterly sales. The following is a statement by Alliance President Kathleen Sgamma:
“Announcing yet more analysis of lease parcels without scheduling the actual sales this year complies with neither the letter of the law nor the spirit of the judge’s order overturning the leasing ban. The environmental analysis was already completed for parcels that were ready to go to auction at the beginning of the year before the unlawful leasing ban was announced. There is no need to redo that analysis. DENVER – Western Energy Alliance today denounced the Department of the Interior’s failure to meet the deadline to hold any onshore oil and natural gas lease sales in fiscal year 2021 and the agency’s continued failure to comply with the Louisiana district court order overturning the leasing ban. Yesterday marked the 45-day deadline for the agency to announce a lease sale before the end of the quarter as required by the Mineral Leasing Act, and hence, to hold any lease sales before the end of the fiscal year which ends September 30th. It also marked 60 days since Judge Terry Doughty in the Western District of Louisiana issued a preliminary injunction overturning the leasing ban.
“For six months, the Interior Department cited the Biden Ban as the reason for not holding quarterly lease sales. In the two months since the ban was overturned by a federal judge, department officials have ducked questions from lawmakers, media, and industry about when lease sales would resume. Now that the Interior Department has missed the deadline to hold any sales before October, it’s crystal clear there is no intention of complying with the judge’s order,” said Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Alliance. “At a recent Senate hearing, Interior Sec. Haaland admitted the president’s ‘ban on new leasing is still in place.’ Meanwhile, the Biden Administration has spent the summer lobbying OPEC and Russia to increase oil production. At the same time it’s encouraging foreign oil production, the Biden Administration is preventing American production and helping drive up the price Americans pay at the pump. First Anniversary of the Great American Outdoors Act: Oil and Natural Gas Funds Conservation8/4/2021
DENVER – Western Energy Alliance celebrates one year of the Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA), signed into law by President Trump on August 4, 2020. Royalties from oil and natural gas development on public lands and waters overwhelmingly fund up to $2.8 billion annually for conservation and public lands infrastructure, providing the American taxpayer a significant return on domestic energy production.
“Despite the Interior Department taking all the credit on the one-year anniversary of GAOA, oil and natural gas leasing and development on public lands provides the conservation investment almost single-handedly,” said Kathleen Sgamma, president of Western Energy Alliance. “We’re proud to produce environmentally responsible oil and natural gas on multiple-use public lands because it provides affordable, sustainable energy for Americans. We’re also proud that the investment in conservation mandated by GAOA is only possible because oil and natural gas companies provide the funding for projects in national parks and other public lands. For example, our revenues fund $154 million in projects at the Blue Ridge Parkway, $126 million at Yellowstone, and $88 million at Yosemite.” DENVER – Western Energy Alliance today announced its continued support for keeping the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) headquarters in Grand Junction, Colo. The Alliance thanks Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and Senator John Hickenlooper (D) for recognizing the benefits of having federal land managers near the people most impacted by BLM decisions. The following statement is from Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Alliance:
“Since 2017, we have supported moving BLM headquarters out West where over 97% of BLM lands are located. Citizens in Colorado and across the West are disproportionately impacted by BLM decisions, whereas they barely register for those in the D.C. metropolitan area or along the East Coast, most of whom never heard the acronym “BLM” until last year, and with a completely unrelated meaning. |
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