President of Western Energy Alliance says every federal agency is going after the oil, gas industry

Western Energy Alliance President Kathleen Sgamma says that every federal agency is going after the oil and natural gas industry. 

"It's part of this whole government approach," Sgamma said on a recent John Solomon Reports podcast. "Every agency is in on the act of either defunding the oil and natural gas industry. In the case of BLM (Bureau of Land Management), they're saying 'you can't really do your project here like you could in the past,' or 'we're not going to lease like we did in the past, because we're just going to protect the land.'"

Shortly after President Biden took office, he signed an executive order that banned new oil and natural gas leasing on federal lands and waters.

According to the Western Energy Alliance, while the order didn't ban permitting on existing leases, it negatively affected existing projects that were awaiting adjacent leases.

Sgamma argued that if energy isn't produced in the U.S., it's going to be imported from somewhere else. 

"If we can't produce it in the United States, we have to import it from somewhere else," she said. "So we get about 10% of our oil and natural gas from BLM lands, from onshore oil and gas production. That is federal. So that might not sound like a lot. But if you take away 10% of our production, it starts to add up."

Sgamma recently testified in front of Congress regarding government overreach in terms of the Bureau of Land Management, conservation and landscape health. 

During her testimony, she said that the Bureau of Land Management in general would limit productive leases if H.R. 3397 was passed. This bill would require the Director of the BLM to withdraw a rule of the bureau relating to conservation and landscape health.