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.
Insurance companies paid out $55 million in claims from the natural gas outage of last winter, reports Trip Jennings of The Santa Fe New Mexican. About $45 million went to homeowners, while more than $10 million went to commercial properties and $200,000 for automobile claims.
Gov. Susana Martinez said she’s still angry at the New Mexico Gas Company over the fact that areas of the state did not have natural gas as of Tuesday. Meanwhile, state Sen.Carlos Cisneros, D-Questa, requested an investigation from the Attorney General’s office on the causes of the crisis.
Gov. Susana Martinez ordered 300 National Guard troops and dozens of police officers from both the Albuquerque Police Department and the New Mexico State Police to Taos and Española Monday to help turn back on natural gas to thousands of residents who have been without the gas for nearly a week. The workers are scrambling to restore heat before another winter storm hits the state Tuesday.
Just a week after a deadly pipeline blast in California, officials from Mountainair were disappointed to find PRC commissioners reluctant to approve what they had expected to be a routine regulatory waiver.
“There’s this pattern of companies doing something but not doing enough, not taking things seriously enough,” Commissioner Marks said. “It’s not that they don’t care. The problem is that the responses aren’t sufficiently large, given the scale of the dangers.”
In the 10 years since a massive natural gas pipeline explosion near Carlsbad killed a dozen people, federal regulators and lawmakers have passed a number of laws to address pipeline safety. But an investigation shows that oversight of the nation’s 2.3 million miles of pipelines is still severely lacking.
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…
PNM officials and gas workers were grilled Monday by Public Regulation Commission (PRC) commissioner Jason Marks and an attorney for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, over a potentially explosive 2008 gas leak at the intersection of Albuquerque’s Montgomery and Carlisle blvds. The leak may not have been the busy intersection’s first, and pipeline maintenance and corrosion monitoring lapses were widespread in Albuquerque, commissioners learned.
Store managers at Carlisle and Montgomery in Albuquerque expressed shock Saturday over news reports that the PNM work crews that had dug up their parking lot in 2008 were responding to a potentially explosive natural gas pipeline leak at the busy intersection. The leak had been allowed to languish without repair for two months, between May and July 2008, The Independent reported Friday.
“One of the (PNM) guys, he said, ‘let’s see if we blow the place up’,” Ray Lueras told The Independent. “I thought he was joking but I remember looking at him because he wasn’t laughing.”
PNM foreman Frank Sanchez discovered a potentially explosive natural gas pipeline leak May 19, 2008 at the busy intersection of Albuquerque’s Montgomery Blvd and Carlisle Blvd., within a city block of two gas stations.
Two months later, the leak had still not been repaired. Nor had PNM alerted state authorities of the hazard, as required by law. During that time, in violation of PNM’s own rules, PNM employees simply left the site unattended.
Under the Pipeline Safety Act and PRC regulations, the company could face up to $500,000 in fines for the violations, but on Monday, nearly two years after the incident, the PRC will review PNM’s proposal to pay just $66,000.
Members of the natural gas industry have sent a letter to both New Mexico senators asking that natural gas be added to any clean energy mandate that passes Congress, according to The Hill.
In January, then-President of the New Mexico…
Missouri officials acknowledged Monday that they reported inflated numbers of food stamp recipients to the federal government, calling into question millions of dollars of bonuses paid to the state for running one of the nation’s top-flight programs, according to the…
Legendary Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens isn’t exactly known as a friend to Democrats.
A process pioneered by Halliburton, called hydraulic fracturing, shoots vast amounts of water, sand and chemicals several miles underground to break apart rock and release the gas. Over the last few years, however, a series of contamination incidents have ignited a debate over whether the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing may threaten the nation’s increasingly precious drinking water supply.
The Albuquerque Journal Poll continues today and shows Democrat Martin Heinrich with a narrow lead over Republican Darren White in the race for the 1st Congressional District, but with 16 percent of voters still undecided. In northern New Mexico, the…
