Now that commissioners in Mora County have approved the only county-wide ordinance in the nation specifically prohibiting all oil and gas drilling, prepare for lawyers on both sides to do battle.
Wally Drangmeister, spokesman for the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association, told New Mexico Watchdog his organization “can’t comment on filing a lawsuit” but that “many people in the [...]

At least three members of New Mexico’s Capitol Hill delegation are in favor of potential natural gas expansion to Japan — including Sens. Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich, who have enjoyed support from environmental organizations that oppose increased production.
“The export of U.S. natural gas to allies such as Japan would economically benefit states like New Mexico because we’re rich [...]

The anti-fracking bill got drilled in committee.
The first-ever legislation introduced in the Roundhouse that would ban the practice of hydraulic fracturing in the oil and gas industry in New Mexico was tabled on a 8-2 vote, with four Democrats siding with the four Republicans in the Senate Conservation Committee.
Senate Bill 547 was sponsored by freshman Sen. [...]

A bill sponsored by Democratic state Sen. Bill Soules of Las Cruces to ban hydraulic fracturing in New Mexico has generated a letter from a Republican senator, also from the Las Cruces area, saying a prohibition on what’s called “fracking” would “kill the economic future” of the state.
Last week, Sen. Soules told New Mexico Watchdog his Senate [...]

“Sometimes we have to step outside the boundaries of the Constitution to get things done.”
That’s the quote that almost jumps off the page from an environmentalist discussing a controversy in the northern New Mexico town of Las Vegas over hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as “fracking.”
Back in April, the city council in the town of 15,000 [...]

The US Energy Information Administration reported this month that CO2 levels in America are at their lowest rate in 20 years:
That should make all of us happy but for some in the environmental movement, apparently good news just isn’t good enough.
That’s because the drop in CO2 levels is largely attributed to the country’s increasing use [...]

A few years ago, the term “fracking” was a word most Americans — and most New Mexicans — had never heard of.
But now, the nickname for hydraulic fracturing has become a loaded term. For those in the natural gas industry, it refers to a process of pumping a mixture of sand, water and chemicals into [...]

The lady with the hand-puppet left disappointed.
During a break in the hearing of the Oil Conservation Commission on Thursday (Nov. 17), an environmental activist approached the members of the commission who were about to vote on adopting rules requiring oil and natural gas producers in New Mexico to disclose what fluids they use during [...]

In the last few years, there has been an increasingly fractious debate about “fracking.”
That’s slang for hydraulic fracturing, a technique the natural gas industry has used with increasing frequency to extract hydrocarbons, often at thousands of feet below the earth’s surface. The technology has been remarkably successful but environmentalists have sharply criticized the procedure, [...]