Opinion

The bare facts about oil and gas in New Mexico

By any standard, in the past decade oil production in New Mexico has attained world-class stature. In 2023, New Mexico was producing about 1.8 million barrels per day (657 million barrels that year) of crude oil, 10 times more than it was producing in 2010, thanks to investments in new fracking technologies. This quantity places New Mexico just about even with the oilrich countries of Mexico, Kazakhstan, and Norway, and slightly above Nigeria and Qatar. If New Mexico were a nation it would rank about 14th in the world in oil production, well above the OPEC countries of Libya, Algeria, and Venezuela. Visionary as they might have been, it seems unlikely that Mary and Martin Yates, thrilled by the gushing black liquid at Illinois #3 in Spring of 1924, could have imagined that exactly one century later their descendants would still be drilling in a New Mexico now producing more oil than Qatar.
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The shadows turned from the sun

At 5:30 a.m., it was still dark when we — five cops, two city council members, and one city manager — took off from City Hall on bikes. Within a few minutes, the sun started creeping over the mountains, showing us the muted colors of the old adobes in the nearby neighborhood.
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New Mexico betting on losers

Left, right, or center, economists tend to agree that “corporate welfare” is not good public policy or good economics. A recent Rasmussen poll found that approximately 65% of Americans (regardless or political philosophy or affiliation) oppose corporate welfare. Definitions of what constitutes such “welfare” vary, but generally relate to policies that involve politicians picking winners and losers in the economy.
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Vacationing on the cheap

I’m a big fan of vacations on the cheap, which is good, since I’ve seldom been able to afford anything first-class. Besides, top-dollar travel often overlooks the best stuff to see. Several years ago, when my family was younger and we were fairly new to the Land of Enchantment, we decided to take a New Mexico-centric vacation. My wife and I, along with our two daughters, got into our four-door sedan early one summer morning and left our northern New Mexico home in search of wonderment, which we found at just about every stop.
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All She Wrote

Let’s start with the good news: New Mexico is number one on an important ranking. We have the nation’s lowest property taxes, and they’ve been the lowest for a long time.
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He would give them water

I’ve thought more about what Jesus would do in the last five months than I have since those bracelets were all the rage in the late ‘90s. Heading to an event this week, I realized I was going to be awkwardly early instead of fashionably late, so I took a detour to an area where homeless encampments had frustrated residents and restaurants nearby.
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