Jerry Redfern
Cover Story
A truck drives in front of a few of the thousands of wells pulling up oil in the Loco Hills area of the Permian Basin north of Carlsbad.
This story was published by journalism nonprofit Capital & Main, which reports on economic, environmental and social issues in the West. capitalandmain.com
Big, transformative bills involving public safety and oil and gas regulation were up for debate during New Mexico’s legislative session at the start of the year. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham promoted both initiatives, and both died in the Democratic-led Legislature. Lujan Grisham has now called a controversial special legislative session starting Thursday to get more public safety laws passed in the face of rising violent crime and a booming homelessness problem. Oil and gas industry reform is not, however, on the agenda, despite the fact that, in spite of tougher rules, the state continues to uncover clean air violations by the oil and gas industry—violations that lead to health problems today and more climate problems for the future.
Before the July Fourth weekend, the New Mexico Environment Department — one of two agencies that monitor oilfield operations in the state — announced the results of a six-month inspection sweep conducted with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, looking at oil and gas facilities in New Mexico’s portion of the Permian Basin, the highest producing oil field in the nation. Of 124 facilities investigated, 75 were emitting volatile organic compounds, which contribute to the formation of ozone, possibly violating state rules and the federal Clean Air Act. Further investigation is required before civil or criminal proceedings can be launched, said Drew Goretzka, spokesperson for the New Mexico Environment Department.
The results of the inspections are part of a systemic problem. According to James Kenney, the Environment Department secretary, the two lawyers in his office already have 79 oil and gas air quality investigations on their plates, comprising 70% of their caseload. Furthermore, he said 15% of New Mexico’s oil production is already happening under federal consent decrees after companies were found to be violating clean air laws. “I would expect that … percentage to rise based on the most recent round of inspections,” Kenney said.
The recent inspections weren’t random. “We started with satellite data that was looking at emissions,” he said, then used compliance histories and citizen complaints to narrow the field and choose where to inspect.
“Time and time again, the compliance rate sort of tends to hover — no matter when we look or where we look — around a 50%-60% number,” Kenney said. Looked at from the other direction: Wherever the Environment Department looks, 40%-50% of oil and gas production sites fail to meet state and federal air quality standards.
“What stuck out to me [in the announcement] is that 60% of inspected sites have a violation,” said Kayley Shoup, an organizer with Citizens Caring for the Future, an industry and environmental watchdog in New Mexico’s portion of the Permian Basin. “And I thought to myself, you know, what about everything else that goes un-inspected 90% of the time?”
Meanwhile, the number of wells needing inspections keeps growing. “You just cannot outrun the growth of this industry,” she said. “If you were to come down here, you’d think, ‘Oh, it’s 1985′ … Oil and gas is still just king, and it’s continuing to grow.”
Since Lujan Grisham took office in 2019, oil production has more than doubled in New Mexico and state agencies have implemented some of the strictest rules in the nation. The Methane Rule and the Ozone Precursor Rule were written to keep oil and gas emissions out of the state’s air to combat climate warming and air pollution.
But rules are not laws and could be upended by a future state administration. Coupled with recent decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court hamstringing the EPA’s ability to create and enforce its own rules, New Mexico could well face a future with reduced protections from both state and federal agencies.
“It’s important we get the ozone rule codified in statute,” Kenney said. “It needs to be embedded into state law.” As for possibly losing backing from the EPA, he took a hopeful stand. “I think the years that we’ve invested with EPA, and the years that my legal team has invested with [the Department of Justice] has given us an enhanced skill set to be able to navigate some of these cases on our own.”
Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, executive director of the Western Environmental Law Center, isn’t as optimistic. “I suspect state agencies will buckle under this pressure,” he said.
Increased enforcement also requires increased funding, and perennial underfunding has prevented state agencies from fully carrying out their environmental protection work. The New Mexico Environment Department has now started a process to dramatically increase the permit fees paid by polluters such as oil and gas companies. Those permits allow facilities to release set amounts of pollutants — any excess can be fined. The fee increases would be earmarked for greater enforcement.
“Laws and rules are only effective if they are implemented and enforced,” Schlenker-Goodrich said. “Oil and gas companies are fully aware of the lack of federal and state enforcement capacity,” he said, and the high noncompliance rate “is a feature, not a bug, of the oil and gas industry’s business model.
“It’s easier and cheaper to risk getting caught than to comply with laws and rules.”
Missi Currier, president and CEO of the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association, the state’s largest industry association, said, “Members are dedicated to correcting mistakes when they do occur.” She added, “Our members make every effort to comply with federal and state regulations to help protect the communities in which we operate.” She said the Environment Department and EPA findings were “based on a small sample of operations.”
Last week, the association sent out an email blast thanking the sponsors of its annual meeting. Twelve of the sponsors are oil and gas producers, and 10 of those have been cited for possible Clean Air Act violations or given Notices of Violation — or both — by the EPA since the start of 2023.
Kenney said that oil and gas producers have told him they can’t quickly fix problems in the field because their offices are in Houston or Denver. “Hello, not my problem,” he said. “Hire more people. Hire more New Mexicans. Set up offices here.”
He said, “They have the resources. They have the means.”
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“What we have seen when it comes to the climate science is that climate change is actually happening faster and probably more severely than we expected,” Melissa Lott, professor of practice at the Columbia University Climate School, said in a media briefing last week. She noted that heat death numbers are growing rapidly, excess heat leads to drops in productivity, and that heat intensifies storms, such as Hurricane Beryl, which caused death and destruction in the Caribbean and Mexico and knocked out power for millions in Texas.
Shoup sees that change on the ground, in New Mexico. “The way you do know we’re in a climate crisis … is the heat,” she said. She grew up in Carlsbad in the middle of the Permian Basin, and “it’s not what it was during my childhood, which was not that long ago.”
The results are burned in the landscape around the state. The latest happened in Ruidoso, a cool respite from the baking heat of the Permian Basin, two hours west and 3,500 feet higher in the Sierra Blanca Mountains. In June, the South Fork and Salt fires torched more than 25,000 acres around Ruidoso, burned 1,400 buildings, killed two people and forced the town to evacuate. Last week, as happens after fires burn around New Mexico’s mountain communities, the town evacuated again, after torrential rains fell on the burn scars and washed away homes that had escaped the fires.
Lincoln County, where Ruidoso sits, spent 33 of the last 48 months suffering some level of drought. Since the turn of the millennium, much of New Mexico has been in a drought more often than not. Studies regularly show that human-caused climate change is increasing the heat and intensity of droughts across the American West. That comes from increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels, and leaks in the fossil-fuel supply chain — such as those found by the New Mexico Environment Department and EPA — that release methane, a gas that is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.
editor@sfreporter.com
Drought Monitor
Lujan Grisham has earmarked millions of dollars to help Ruidoso and the surrounding area in the fires’ aftermath. In addition, Chevron pledged $100,000 to be split between a community foundation and the Mescalero Apache Tribe, whose lands also burned. The Environment Department and EPA found 15 possible Clean Air Act violations at Chevron properties in the Permian Basin during their inspection sweep.
The state methane and ozone precursor rules began with a working group that included state agencies, environmental groups and a large number of oil and gas industry representatives, including Chevron. Kenney’s Environment Department was at the center of the negotiations. “I will proudly say we’ve done our part,” he said. “I need those who are regulated by the rule to proudly do their part as well.”
