So far in our ongoing look at the 2025 New Mexico Legislature, we’ve talked about what did and didn’t pass, the weird and bad bills proposed by leading Republicans, and how modernizing the legislature is a must if we are to have any hope of avoiding future dud sessions like 2025 was.
As we’ve stated, the usual mucking about with various memorials and resolutions that happens every year is a symptom of larger problems, yet it feels especially blatant because the strategy of stalling, delaying, and denying is taking place against the backdrop of an ongoing constitutional crisis facing our country at every turn.
Which is why today we need to talk about climate issues and why it’s imperative that those in power in New Mexico address the multiple crises we’re facing right now, not next year or “at some point in the future.” Simply put, New Mexicans are facing an unmitigated disaster because of the almost wholly unregulated oil and gas industry.
Of course the oil and gas industry says it’s the most regulated industry in the state/country/world, but if that were true they wouldn’t be the single largest contributor to emissions in the state of New Mexico and arguably the world, would they? Plain and simple, they’re lying. They are ruling our state by fiat and we need to talk about it.
Regulation bills throttled before they even start
One of the biggest failings of the legislature this year was SB4, the Clear Horizons Act. For some perspective, this isn’t the first time this bill, or at least one with its main goals, has been introduced at the legislature and it’s not the first time it’s failed. Which makes it all the more tragic really.
The goal of a comprehensive emissions bill is to protect our land, air, and water by curbing the outrageous amounts of toxic greenhouse gases spewed into the atmosphere from the oil and gas industry AT THE POINT OF PRODUCTION, as well as establish all the necessary legal and regulatory frameworks and funding that go along with it.
The biggest argument from industry is that there are “already regulations” in place, but most of those are administrative and are simply not enough.
Some examples:
2019 – The Legislature passed the Energy Transition Act and that should be celebrated. But the ETA had to do with energy production by utilities. Meanwhile, bills that looked at mitigating the harmful effects of the oil and gas industry’s emissions died on the vine, and have ever since. That year SB500 attempted to charge a royalty rate for any O&G “byproduct” that was vented or flared which would have at least commodified those emissions and recouped some revenue for the state, but it never made it past committee.
2020 – HB293 NM Greenhouse Gas Evaluations didn’t even have a direct effect on Industry but just made an appropriation for the Environment Department to finish an inventory of statewide emissions. That bill was cut down in committee.
2021 – HB9, the Climate Solutions Act, which made it through one committee before dying, would have set limits and regulations in place for greenhouse gas emissions at the source.
2022 – HB6, the Clean Future Act, made its way through two House Committees but was never heard from again.
2023 – There were multiple bills that addressed the oil and gas industry but the standout piece that could have had the most impact was SB418, which sought to overhaul the state’s Oil and Gas Act, which has not been revised since 1935. Yeah, 90 years ago. After making it through one Senate committee, that bill never resurfaced.
2024 – Last year, TWO separate bills that would have at least required that oil and gas wells be setback (drilled further away) from schools WEREN’T EVEN PRINTED, meaning they were presented as possible legislation but they failed to be determined “germaine” by our archaic standards of 30-day sessions focusing on budget-only items, or at the whim of the Governor.
And then of course we saw the slow death of SB4 this year, the Clear Horizons Act, as it made it through one Senate Committee only to whither away and never be brought forward again.
So there you go. And we can’t even blame it on Republicans, because every single year the legislature was controlled by the Democrats and every single year, Michelle Lujan Grisham has been the Governor. Every single year there’s been an attempt to address source-based emissions from the oil and gas industry. Every single year those bills met an unceremonious death at the hands of committee chairs unwilling to even hear debate.
Why is this happening?
What no one wants to talk about is how much money the oil industry is pumping into New Mexico’s political system to stop ANY meaningful change to their industry.
There have been SOME changes, like this year’s passage of SB23 which allows for an increase to the amount of royalties the State Land Office can charge for premium tracts of land leased to Oil companies.
BUT, and y’all this is a BBL level of BUT here, that bill has been introduced every single year since 2019 and the state land commissioner literally withdrew the premium tracts in 2024 after it failed for the fifth time before it passed.
While the oil lobbyists showed up in force to oppose the bill once again, they did NOT take out literal tens of thousands of dollars in ads to oppose it the way they did the Clear Horizons Act.
What does that mean? It could be argued that the oil and gas companies knew that they’d lose a fight against a principled leader like Stephanie Garcia Richard as State Land Commissioner and that in the long run it was more important to have access to those premium tracts than to keep fighting that battle.
Or you could argue that the legislature as a whole realized finally that OUR resources are worth a premium and that charging oil companies a competitive rate comparable with federal land leases or neighboring state leases is just good business. Either way, the full weight of the oil and gas industry didn’t lean *as hard* to fight that bill this year in the same way it has in the past or as it did on SB4.
Which begs the question: why do oil executives hate emissions controls so much?
There’s some real technical jargon here about equipment and storage and process but let’s just cut to the chase: Extracting oil and gas from the ground is dirty business. Capturing all of the gas that comes out of the ground when you’re trying to capture liquid petroleum isn’t easy and requires more equipment and monitoring than oil companies want to spend to do it.
The break even price for a barrel of oil extracted in the permian basin is thought to be around $65-$70 per barrel, meaning that the Wall Street traders and Houston executives who are the ones actually making money off of NM’s resources want that per-barrel COST to be as low as possible, right?
Ok so, maybe back in 2020 when oil was literally negative $34 a barrel it makes sense that oil companies would fight tooth and nail against any additional regulation, sure, we can see that. And this year as oil prices have hovered under $70 most of the year (Donald Trump is bad for the oil industry, actually) so that explains the all-out effort to defeat SB4 this year.
But what about back in 2022 when WTI was trading for over $119/barrel? Why did industry fight so hard back then to kill our potential emissions controls?
No more “thoughts and prayers” for New Mexicans dealing with the direct impacts of pollution
This is where we have to once again say the quiet part out loud. And we’re going to make an analogy that some people may have a hard time with but we cannot overemphasize how the two issues are the same politically speaking.
After every horrifying mass-shooting event we’ve heard the same argument from the gun industry and their lobbyists and their sycophantic elected stooges. “Now is not the time to politicize this; people want to make this tragedy political; it’s not the guns; etc etc etc” But of course then we never talk about it during the brief moments between horrific tragedies either, do we?
Well, in the same vein, oil executives, their lobby, and all of the lawmakers who’ve taken their campaign donations, talk out of both sides of their mouths. When the international oil market is doing well it’s “why would we want to hurt (regulate) this industry that is providing so much revenue” but when those prices slip it’s “Why would we want to put further pressure on an industry that is suffering right now?”
Just as “thoughts and prayers” do nothing for Americans living in communities awash in guns and mass shootings, memorials, resolutions, and bills that never even get real consideration do nothing for New Mexicans facing the real impacts of oil and gas producers who ignore safety and health limits, and will spend any amount of money to deny or delay changes.
The price we all pay in New Mexico for the ongoing refusal to regulate the oil industry is likely a number no one can fathom. Devastating wildfires and floods that cost us BILLIONS of dollars. Healthcare costs that are per capita higher than neighboring states because of our air quality. Entire communities tied economically to an industry that five years ago laid off over 100,000 workers AND STILL POSTED RECORD PROFITS that quarter.
Oil companies are some of the most profitable corporations in the world. Full stop. There’s no limit to how much money they could spend to keep things running their way, and we see that every single election and every single legislative session, like clockwork.
But our air, land and water are finite. Our state’s budget and the millions of lives that depend on the services it provides for is real. We have to figure out a way that the two things aren’t working against each other, and we need to do it soon.