It was a busy media month in January. We started off the New Year on January 1st, quoted in the Santa Fe New Mexican on the inappropriate appointment by Governor Lujan Grisham of former Legislator Greg Nibert to the Public Regulatory Commission (PRC). One of the main tasks of the PRC is to make sure that energy projects adhere to the Energy Transition Act (2019), which Nibert, a lawyer who works for the oil and gas industry, voted against. You can read the article here.
We were included in a follow-up article on January 9th on the appointment of Nibert to the PRC when he said he would not recuse himself from cases involving his old law firm. Read the article here.
Between those two PRC-related articles, we offered a comment on January 4th on Jimmy Carter’s legacy in New Mexico. Carter, who died on December 29, 2024, was well ahead of his time in trying to understand global warming and climate change and taking action. He symbolically placed solar water heaters on the white House and more substantially engaged White House policy experts to provide him analyses on the implications of global warming and help him evolve his own thinking and policy directives. You can read the article here.
On January 30th, we were interviewed by KUNM for a story about two upcoming water bills, SB21 and SB22. Together, these two bills would give the New Mexico Environment Department authority to issue and enforce water quality permits for both waters still protected by the diminished federal Clean Water Act and the vast majority of other surface waters in the state that do not have federal protections. You can read or listen to the story here.
Finally, on Feb 2nd, the Santa Fe New Mexican published an opinion piece signed by Demis Foster that took on the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association’s (NMOGA) effort – in identical opinion pieces in at least five papers in the state – to claim it was the industry’s innovation that had led to lower methane emissions in the Permian Basin in 2024. We pointed out that it was the result of New Mexico’s strong methane rules and enforcement, that the monitoring technology used to support the industry’s claim is lacking, and that NMOGA had failed to include the fact that it is not just the production of fossil fuels that causes global warming, but the use of oil and gas across the entire economy. You can read the opinion here.