I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
BP has agreed to sell $3 billion worth of BP’s Permian Basin gas and oil holdings in southeast New Mexico and Texas, to Houston-based Apache Corp, a company criticized in the past for poor safety practices.
The sale is part of BP’s $7 billion fire sale of assets around the world to help pay for a government-mandated $20 billion victim fund for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill off Louisiana’s coast, the worst oil spill in U.S. history.
Apache Corp. was expected to also purchase BP’s Prudhoe Bay oil fields in northern Alaska. But the announcement of BP’s sale of its Permian Basin holdings made no mention of its assets in Alaska.
BP has a troubled safety record at its refineries and wells.
But Apache Corp., which purchases mature oil and gas properties around the world, has also had recent accidents. One of Apache’s offshore gas processing plants off the Louisiana coast caught fire Jan. 13, killing one worker. And the company’s subsidiaries and holdings in Australia and Asia suffered vessel fires and pipeline explosions in 2008 and 2009, according to trade journal news reports.
Apache Energy was castigated in the Australian media over a 2008 gas pipeline explosion that led to a gas supply crisis in western Australia, after it was learned Australian authorities had been urging the company for several years to institute a plan for continuing operations after an industrial disaster such as the pipeline explosion.
Apache Energy is a subsidiary of Apache Corp., according to SEC filings and online company profiles.
