Profits won’t keep America beautiful
As Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke visited our state (“Interior secretary to visit New Mexico amid monument review,” July 26), the main topic of conversation likely was the protection of the national monuments that so many have worked so hard to protect.
But another urgent issue is that the Bureau of Land Management, under Mr. Zinke, has stalled rules that would curb oil and gas waste by private companies on our public lands.
Throughout oil and gas systems, methane is accidentally leaked and is purposely vented and flared, and this represents millions of dollars of lost revenue for our state. These rules would have applied to both new and existing wells on public lands that private companies build and profit from and yet often waste this publicly held resource because they don’t want to invest in the capture equipment and check for leaks and then repair them. But it turns out that over the life of most wells, these technologies earn money for owners and, most importantly, keep other pollutants from escaping that cause deadly respiratory illnesses that impact families and children in places where we least expect to see air pollution.
In a state with so many public lands, we only ask that companies pay their fair share to us, the citizen owners of these lands, for the use of our natural resources. The BLM methane rules were the subject of deep and proper public comment and should be implemented as soon as possible. It seems to me that companies like ExxonMobil and Marathon Oil who are investing billions of dollars in extracting in New Mexico should be good corporate neighbors and do the job right and protect not just our health, but respect the state in which they are guests.