Don Schreiber

Deadline looms for NM comments on oil and gas methane rule rollbacks

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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — New Mexico residents have until Wednesday to submit comments on stricter standards for methane leaks from new and modified oil and gas operations. The tougher rules were approved under the Obama administration, but they’re among those the Trump administration has promised to roll back. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has argued that the oil and gas industry didn’t have enough input on the new standards aimed at preventing air pollution. New Mexico rancher Don Schreiber said he opposes any rollback. He attended dozens of public meetings and said hundreds of thousands of comments were already submitted supporting the changes.

BP America

In heart of Southwest, natural gas leaks fuel a methane menace

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BLANCO, N.M. –  Most evenings, the quiet is almost intoxicating. The whoosh of the wind through the junipers, the whinny of horses in their stalls, the raspy squawking of ravens – those are the sounds Don and Jane Schreiber have grown to love on their remote Devil’s Spring Ranch. The views are mesmerizing, too. Long, lonesome ridges of khaki-colored rocks, dome-like outcrops and distant mesas rise from a sea of sage and rabbitbrush. The ranch and surrounding countryside are a surprising setting for an enduring climate change problem: a huge cloud of methane – a potent, heat-trapping gas – that is 10 times larger than the city of Chicago.

Alison Cassady

Report: Two NM regions among top five for methane emissions

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New Mexico’s two biggest energy-producing regions are two of the most-polluted in the nation when it comes to methane emissions, according to a study released today. Both the San Juan Basin and the Permian Basin rank as the third and fourth most methane polluted regions in the country, according to the Washington D.C.-based progressive think tank Center for American Progress’ “The Who’s Who of Methane Pollution” report. The report is based on 2014 data from the federal Environmental Protection Agency. The San Juan Basin, located mostly in northwestern New Mexico, emits the most methane per well in the country. Methane emissions are commonly viewed as a greenhouse gas more harmful than carbon dioxide and the report underlines this point and pushes the federal government for strong regulations limiting them.

Bureau of Land Management

Taxpayers group pushes to stop wasting natural gas

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FARMINGTON, N.M. – Venting and flaring at oil and natural gas wells on public lands in the Four Corners area costs the public millions in lost royalty revenue, and much more to corporations doing the extraction – not to mention releasing a major climate change contributor into the environment. Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonprofit and nonpartisan group, says the technology exists to stop the practice. Buying advertising in the Santa Fe New Mexican and other publications this week, they’re calling for lawmakers to press the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to pass a rule that ends the waste of taxpayer-owned natural gas on federal lands. Don Schreiber owns Devils’s Spring Ranch in the Four Corners area. “In that escape of natural gas, that is just throwing money away for the oil companies,” he says.