New Mexico's environment department recently announced possible violations at many oil and gas facilities in the Permian Basin. Anthony Moreno talked with investigative journalist Jerry Redfern who covers the oil and gas industry for Capital & Main to learn more about his reporting on the issue.
Transcript:
Anthony Moreno: Jerry, thank you so much for joining us. New Mexico has implemented tougher rules for the oil and gas industry in recent years, but according to your reporting, clean air violations continue. Your reporting shined line on some recent violations within the industry. Can you share with us what type of violations were reported recently by the Environment Department?
Jerry Redfern: Yeah. So, the Environment Department brought in the United States own Environmental Protection Agency, and both of them looked at satellite methane data looking for leaks. And they went back and combed through violation notices in the past and they combed through public complaints about places in the past and put together a set of places to go look at, and it was something around 60% of the places that they looked at had leaks and that's really what we're talking about. They're like gaseous leaks, not like oil leaks on the ground, but they were looking for venting, unlit flares, other sorts of problems like that, and that's what they found. They found places that shouldn't have been venting, venting, they found unlit flares. They found an awful lot of like really simple mistakes, just repeatedly where you know, like hatches weren't closed or were broken or had bad seals on storage tanks and stuff like that. It was a wide range of what they were looking at. And they found a wide range of problems and it was all over the place in the Permian Basin.
Anthony Moreno: So, what do we know about how these violations can impact health problems for people living in these communities near these facilities?
Jerry Redfern: Well, in two ways, the and it's actually reflected in the two rules that you were talking about originally that were designed to try to keep these things from happening, The ozone precursor rule was designed to keep the they're called volatile organic compounds. Those are the, you know, those are the gaseous off gassing stuff that comes from when you're going for oil or natural gas and that's the stuff you smell when you're out in the oil field, those chemicals that come out when mixed in hot air, essentially when the sunlight hits that they break down and create ozone and ozone itself is a very harmful gas and gets inside your lungs. It's an irritant, irritates your eyes and can really badly irritate people who already have respiratory problems like asthma. The other side of it is methane, and that's the main component of natural gas itself, and that the health problems that that creates they're somewhat tangential because methane is a prime driver of climate warming. So, the health problems that come from that, that we don't necessarily always think about in terms of oil and gas, gas issues like overheating people getting too hot, climate getting too hot. So those are the two sort of big issues that this enforcement thing was looking to address.
Anthony Moreno: Speaking of enforcement right now, how does New Mexico's Environment Department enforce violations like this?
Jerry Redfern: Well, an awful lot of the time they're teaming up with the Environmental Protection Agency, the federal group, because Secretary James Kenny says they just don't have the funds and the resources and the people to be able to go out and do this on their own. They do a fair bit of it on their own as it is, but sometimes in bigger projects they want to bring in the EPA. The thing about our own state Environment department is that it's covering absolutely everything that deals with health in the state. All manner of licensing, air pollution from, you know, gravel quarries, or you know, water pollution from dry cleaning shops, and then everything up to and including oil refineries in the state. So, you know there, there's an awful lot of ground they have to cover considering we're the second largest oil producing state in the nation. That's an awfully big ask to put on them as well.
Anthony Moreno: Now you mentioned just how big New Mexico ranks in oil production. The industry has grown considerably in the last several years. So, how may this impact the state's ability to enforce environmental rules?
Jerry Redfern: Well, I think you know, as the special sessions going on in Santa Fe, the key thing to keep in mind there is the ask that the governor is making is more money for enforcement because there are these crimes that continue to happen more and more often because there isn't enough enforcement. And the same thing happens in oil and gas production. The more oil and gas production you have, the more people you're going to need to have to go out and look and make sure that everybody's following the rules and that hasn't kept pace. Oil production in the state has more than doubled since Governor Lujan Grisham has come to office, but the agencies that monitor these things for the state, they certainly have not doubled in size or in their budgets in that time frame to keep up with that.
Anthony Moreno: Jerry Redfern is an investigative reporter covering the oil and gas industry in New Mexico for Capital and Main. He joined us now to discuss these recent clean air violations in the state. Jerry, thanks for joining us.
Jerry Redfern: You're most welcome. Thank you for having me on.
This interview was recorded on Thursday, July 18th. This post was updated to include the interview transcript on July 20th.
