Drilling Debate

By John Arnold 5/5/08 11:30 AM

SANTA FE—As New Mexicans grapple with rising fuel costs, lawmakers are fighting over how to bring them down. Some, including New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici, say more domestic oil production in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and elsewhere is the answer. And while ANWR is ground zero for that debate, New Mexico—the nation’s sixth largest oil producing state—has its own drilling controversies, including a bitter battle in Santa Fe County’s Galisteo Basin. The oil industry says today’s soaring oil prices—at well over $100 a barrel—fuel their argument for tapping the basin and other areas of northern New Mexico. But as we report in this New Mexcio Independent video, drilling opponents aren’t backing down.

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roma 5 months ago 1 point
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Great video Mr. Arnold.

Maybe we should all give our economic stimulus checks to anti-drilling groups instead of to big oil to fill up all the large vehicles you showed in the video.

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lynnallen 5 months ago 1 point
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Headlines of disasters which are becoming common everywhere should wake us up. The most precious thing is the ability to survive in this very changing climate. If we allow precious water to be squandered for a dying oil, we may not have water to survive.

Unimagined Natural Disasters are a real threat. Imagine the Galisteo Basin in a flood. Now imagine it in a flood with lots of oil wells submerged in a tributary river which supplies some towns with drinking water and the river poluted with oil as it flows all the way to the ocean.

We have to think ahead, and think of protecting our water. We can no longer afford corporate greed to endanger our survival.

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poweranger 5 months ago 1 point
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Well,

It was the great oil geologist King Hubbert who pointed out to the American OIl industry in 1956 - 50 years ago! - that American oil production would peak in 1971. So what have they done with that data? They've denied it and crushed any attempt to find solutions or alternatives to unbridled fossil fuel use. Now they will destroy any undestroyed lands for the insignificant amounts of hydrocarbons they might yield. These yields will have no positive impact on supply at all. Santa Fe, Mora, and Rio Arriba counties are starting to stand up to this madness and saying NO! to new drilling with all of its horrible consequences. The oil industry is acting like it's still 1956 with their arrogance, name calling, lying, and manipulation and corruption of the political process - a process that's in bad enough shape already. Santa Feans know we have to get off fossil fuels and are beginning to make headway in this endeavor - not an easy task, but a necessary one. Even Bob Gallagher admits oil/gas is a dead end street, he just won't discuss the alternatives that are out there. That's up to each community. Articulating and implementing this path will be the political challenge in New Mexico, and the world, for he next decade. The communities (and sattes) that rise to the challenge, will thrive; those that don't will crash. While that may paint a simple, brutal picture, it's far less simple and brutal than the dead end vision of ruined lands, poisoned aquifers, and total environmntal destruction that the oil industry holds out. Unlike the dead end vision of continued dependence on oil and gas, It's vision with a future.

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oyegithamu 5 months ago 1 point
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95% of the Arctic Slope is already open to drilling & oil production. Further expansion into the Arctic Refuge will permanently scar the last pristine wilderness in North America.

This area is the calving grounds for the Porcupine Caribou herd, which is considered sacred to the Gwich'in Athabascan people, who have relied on the caribou for thousands of years.

If the authorization to drill in the Arctic Refuge today, it would only lower the price of fuel at the pump by only 1Â¢ and the supply would last for 6 months- if that long.

We have reached, or will soon reach, the peak of oil production. Finding new sources of readily available oil deposits will only get harder as time goes on.

Not only we must find a safe, economical alternative source of fuel for our transportation needs & to heat & light our homes and places of work, we need to find an equally safe and economical alternative to petro-chemicals (plastics) that we use in almost every consumer product bought & sold today.

Wind & solar power are great alternatives to using fossil fuels, but that is only part of the answer. Drilling in the Arctic Refuge & other sensitive areas is not the solution we are looking for.

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