NM County First in US to Ban ALL Oil and Gas Extraction

Mora Valley, New Mexico

From EcoWatch:

Monday the County Commission of Mora County, located in northeastern New Mexico, became the first county in the U.S. to pass an ordinance banning all oil and gas extraction.

Drafted with assistance from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), the Mora County Community Water Rights and Local Self-Government Ordinance establishes a local Bill of Rights—including a right to clean air and water, a right to a healthy environment and the rights of nature—while prohibiting activities which would interfere with those rights, including oil drilling and hydraulic fracturing for shale gas.

Communities across the country are facing drilling and fracking. Fracking brings significant environmental impacts including the production of millions of gallons of toxic wastewater, which can affect drinking water and waterways. Studies have found that fracking is a major global warming contributor, and have linked the underground disposal of frack wastewater to earthquakes.

“Existing state and federal oil and gas laws force fracking and other extraction activities into communities, overriding concerns of residents,” explained Thomas Linzey, Esq., CELDF executive director. “Today’s vote in Mora County is a clear rejection of this structure of law which elevates corporate rights over community rights, which protects industry over people and the natural environment.”

“This vote is a clear expression of the rights guaranteed in the New Mexico Constitution which declares that all governing authority is derived from the people. With this vote, Mora is joining a growing people’s movement for community and nature’s rights,” said Linzey.

“The vote of Mora commission chair John Olivas and vice-chair Alfonso Griego to ban drilling and fracking is not only commendable, it is a statement of leadership that sets the bar for communities across the State of New Mexico,” said CELDF community organizer and Mora County resident, Kathleen Dudley. She explained that the ordinance calls for an amendment to the New Mexico Constitution that “elevates community rights above corporate property rights.”

Mora County joins Las Vegas, NM, which in 2012 passed an ordinance, with assistance from CELDF, which prohibits fracking and establishes rights for the community and the natural environment. CELDF assisted the City of Pittsburgh, PA, to draft the first local Bill of Rights which prohibits fracking in 2010. Communities in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, New York and New Mexico have enacted similar ordinances.

Mora County joins more than 150 communities across the country which have asserted their right to local self-governance through the adoption of local laws that seek to control corporate activities within their municipality.

Visit EcoWatch’s FRACKING page for more related news on this topic.

Save the Gila River meeting held to make plans to save the last free-flowing river in NM

Gila Conservation Coalition is looking to 2014

By Susan Dunlap, Silver City Sun-News

New Mexico will make decisions that determine the fate of the Gila River and the Gila Conservation Coalition held a meeting Thursday night at the Student Memorial Building at WNMU to begin gearing up to try to save the last free-flowing river in the state.

A group of approximately 30 concerned citizens, ranging from high school students to retirees, gathered in the third floor seminar room on campus to get an idea of what they could do to try to influence the outcome of the Gila River. Led by Gila Conservation Coalition Executive Director Allyson Siwik, the group listened to the options and the upcoming events they can attend to stay informed and make their voices heard.

In 2014 the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission (ISC) will begin to provide reports giving analyses of the different options on the table and will make their final recommendation to the Bureau of Reclamation whether to use federal funding under the Arizona Water Settlements Act to divert 14,000 acre feet of water from the Gila River or to pursue non-diversion conservation alternatives. The federal government has promised to provide up to $62 million in funding if New Mexico opts to build a diversion project. But the Gila River diversion project is estimated to cost $300 million dollars.

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San Juan oil drilling heats up in N.M.

An Encana Corp. rig explores for oil south of Farmington. The company has drilled about 30 wells in the area.

(SW.EF! editor’s note: read this mainstream media article with a critical lens, it contains some pro-fracking propaganda.)

Swift and Huntington explore in Colorado

By Chuck Slothower, The Durango Herald

Encana Corp. plans to pour $250 million to $450 million into drilling oil wells on New Mexico’s side of the San Juan Basin next year, the company says.

The Canadian company has aggressively pursued San Juan Basin oil, drilling about 30 wells to date. The drilling is concentrated near Huerfano, N.M., southeast of Farmington.

“Our strategy really is to shift our portfolio more towards oil, so we’re really focusing on areas where we can do that, and the San Juan’s one of those,” said Doug Hock, a Denver-based spokesman for the company.

Encana plans to operate two to four drilling rigs in the area in 2014, according to a company presentation. The wells cost $4 million to $5 million each and have shown initial production rates of 400 to 500 barrels per day.

The San Juan historically has been one of the nation’s most productive natural-gas basins, but with prices low for that commodity and high for oil, drillers are finding oil in some previously overlooked areas.

Improved techniques for horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” have made such drilling possible.

WPX Energy optimistic about continued oil development in the Gallup Sandstone

Aztec Well Services drilling rig 980 is working for WPX Energy to drill horizontal oil wells into the Gallup Sandstone. (Courtesy of Jim Blecha)

By Leigh Black Irvin, The Daily Times

FARMINGTON, NM — WPX Energy has announced that it has initiated oil development in New Mexico’s San Juan Basin after exploratory drilling this spring yielded commercially viable results from the Gallup Sandstone in the Mancos Shale formation.

The wells are located on U.S. Bureau of Land Management and state of New Mexico land near the Lybrook area, which is about 100 miles southeast of Farmington.

WPX has about 159,000 acres under lease in the San Juan Basin, including 31,000 acres in the Gallup Sandstone development.

Staff at WPX’s Aztec office are overseeing operations of the discovery.

The first four Gallup Sandstone wells the company drilled flowed at a maximum rate of 488, 623, 1,004 and 800 barrels of oil per day.

WPX now has six producing wells in the Gallup Sandstone, and the company is in the process of drilling a ninth well. The wells are about 5,000 feet in vertical depth with horizontal laterals averaging about 4,000 to 5,000 feet, according to Susan Alvillar, WPX’s community affairs representative.

“WPX Energy has operated in the San Juan Basin for over 30 years. To date, we have drilled gas wells, but the nine wells in the Gallup Sandstone are oil wells,” Alvillar said. “Our goal is to have eight to 10 additional wells by the end of the year, producing 3,400 barrels of oil equivalent per day.”

The Gallup Sandstone is a sandy interval embedded in the Mancos Shale geologic formation. It is about 90 million years old.

BLM narrows proposed Chaco drilling sites to four

This photo shows Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon, in northwestern New Mexico, about a 2½-hour drive south of Durango. Just four of 38 parcels requested for leasing by gas and oil companies in the area have been approved. The nearest lease site is about 10 miles from Chaco Canyon, the center of the ancestral Pueblo culture that flourished from the 800s to the 1100s.

Energy companies had nominated 38 parcels for leases

By Chuck Slothower, The Durango Herald

Opponents of drilling near Chaco Culture National Historic Park in New Mexico have received a reprieve from proposals to drill on U.S. Bureau of Land Management parcels bordering the park, which is home to ancestral Puebloan ruins.

The BLM this week released an environmental assessment that proposes to lease four of 38 parcels that were nominated by gas and oil companies.

None of the parcels recommended by the BLM’s preferred alternative to go forward is among the nominated parcels closest to the park. One nominated parcel was less than a quarter-mile from the park boundary.

The closest of the four parcels in the preferred alternative is about 10 miles from the park, and all four parcels are in an area that already is home to gas and oil activity.

Chaco Canyon is about a 2½-hour drive south of Durango.

A coalition of environmental groups wants the parcels nearest to Chaco Canyon permanently protected. Some of the parcels have been nominated repeatedly for leasing to gas and oil companies and deferred by the BLM.