As the New Mexico Legislature’s one-month session begins this week, legislators will see a half-dozen bills that could spell big changes for the oil and gas industry through new well placement restrictions, increased fines and higher royalty payments, among other possible shifts. These proposed changes are some of a slate of transformative oil and gas bills peppering the docket, following last year’s general shutout of bills aimed at reforming the fossil fuel business.
The state is the country’s second-largest oil producer and a top-10 natural gas producer as well. So despite New Mexico’s small population, state policy changes have an outsized effect on the nation’s fossil fuel industry. And since Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham came to office in 2019 with a drive to reduce the state’s carbon emissions, New Mexico has enacted some of the toughest oil and gas production regulations in the country, but those have curbed neither production nor greenhouse gas emissions related to that production.
