Brittany Kelm, a senior energy adviser at the White House’s National Energy Dominance Council, is leaving government to lead Sable Offshore Corp.’s Washington policy office.
Kelm will serve as vice president of policy and commercial for the Houston-based firm, taking charge of its Washington operations after months of close contact with the company.
People attending a press conference in Santa Barbara, California, in early June noted Kelm wearing Sable-branded gear during a tour of the company’s oil facilities.
Less than three months after that tour, Kelm announced her departure from the council to head Sable’s Washington office, a move ethics experts say raises serious conflict-of-interest concerns.
“We’ve unleashed California’s offshore oil production!” Kelm wrote in a LinkedIn post, celebrating her time working on energy policy at the council.
Kelm started at the Interior Department before moving to the National Energy Dominance Council as senior policy adviser for oil and gas last May.
At the council, she worked on Gulf energy production programs, facilitated agreements between U.S. companies and Venezuela’s state-run oil company PDVSA, and assisted efforts to permit new liquefied natural gas facilities nationwide.
The Trump administration invoked the Defense Production Act earlier this year to help Sable restart a pipeline system that had been shut down following a spill in 2015, overriding objections from state and local authorities.
Sable has also pushed the administration to establish a West Coast strategic petroleum reserve, a policy initiative that overlapped directly with Kelm’s portfolio at the council.
The White House maintains that Kelm did not work on official matters involving Sable while negotiating her new position, and says she will not touch ongoing official matters between the company and the administration going forward.
White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers called suggestions of a conflict “irresponsible,” pushing back against reporting that characterized the transition as ethically problematic.
Ethics experts and former government officials say the move, even by Washington’s normally permissive standards, threatens to erode the boundary between public service and private industry lobbying.
One oil industry executive told reporters the revolving door in this case has rarely been “so brazen,” a striking acknowledgment from within the sector itself.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office branded the National Energy Dominance Council a “taxpayer-funded lobbying shop for the fossil fuel industry,” escalating political scrutiny of the transition.
Kelm also attended a contract-signing ceremony for Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA just days after leaving government, further fueling questions about the boundaries she observed while still in her official role.
