Dr. Robert Balch, director of the Petroleum Recovery Research Center at New Mexico Tech in Socorro, speaks with KC Counts about how the university has responded to the loss of tens of millions of research dollars. Here's a transcript of their conversation:
KC Counts:
All right, Dr. Balch, well, maybe you can take us back to when you found out that New Mexico Tech's research was a target for Doge cuts. What was that initial news like?
Dr. Robert Balch:
So, I mean, we'd kind of been expecting something because of what happened with NIH and a couple of other organizations before us. So, we'd heard chatter that DOE was looking at making some program changes. And that's not really uncommon. When you have a change in administration, then you have changes in programs. What's uncommon is what then happened, which is that projects were selected for cancellation without changing the program beforehand. So normally, they change the program and then set up calls for proposals and people can apply and there's like a more of a subtle shift. About 25 years ago, there was a case where all of the projects in a program were canceled under fossil energy. And that was kind of indiscriminate. They just zeroed it out. Everybody got hit the same. But in this case, because it was blue states only, I think it was part of a budget negotiation or something. So that part was a little bit surprising. We have friends and colleagues that are in red states. Their projects are going on.
KC Counts:
Similar projects?
Dr. Robert Balch:
Very similar projects. So, yeah, and I know that Delaney told you I didn't want to be political, and I don't want to be political, but that is what's kind of unusual here. So, there wasn't a lot of warning. There was a list of, a couple of days before, there was a list of projects that included all of the projects and a few of the big DOE carbon programs for all 50 states. And then when the cancellation letter came out, the list that was included was just in blue states. So of course, New Mexico isa blue state. So we had four projects canceled and two projects ghosted.
KC Counts:
By ghosted? You know, what does that mean? They just did just nothing? No money and no word?
Dr. Robert Balch:
Yeah, so two projects worth about $60 million were already ongoing. They'd been operating for about a year. They were on track and they had met deliverables or were on track to meet deliverables on time. So things were going well. Two of the projects were selected in the fall of 2024 by DOE in a competitive process, and we were selected for awards, and we were in negotiation at the time. And because a project that is in negotiation is not final, the DOE or any agency can actually just stop the negotiation and the project goes away. That's what I mean by ghosted. So we never have heard anything about those projects until very recently. We got a letter asking about one of them, if we still had the team that was capable to perform the work. It was a critical minerals project.
KC Counts:
So, did you still have the team?
Dr. Robert Balch:
Well, we do, but we don't know what's going on there. So the process, the way it was outlined to us in October, was you had a pretty short time, like two weeks or three weeks to appeal. And then according to the processes that were supposed to follow within a month or so, you were supposed to get an appointment and be able to have an in-person discussion about it. We also heard at the time that people in previous rounds of this, like NIH, had had success in re-scoping projects, basically turning it into a new project that better fits the priorities of the current administration. So we did appeal for the two projects that had been ongoing. There's no appeal process for the ghosted projects. And from there, we got a letter back from them saying that they had received it and they would be contacting us later. So the contacting us later actually started about a week and a half ago. So after about five months of delay, we finally got an e-mail from the project manager saying that they were getting ready to start processing these appeals.
KC Counts:
Wow.
Dr. Robert Balch:
So that's pretty much where we are. We really don't know what's going on. You know, for things that were billed before October of 2025, they've been taking the invoices in and paying them and things. So everything's really just kind of on hold for those two projects.
KC Counts:
Dr. Balch, we spoke with Congressman Gabe Vasquez who said that there have been impacts to New Mexico Tech. He cited losing students and professors. How has the university been impacted since November?
Dr. Robert Balch:
So, I mean, we haven't actually lost anybody in the sense that people that were here are now gone. But we have lost positions that we were going to fill this year. So students we would have brought in, postdoctoral researchers we would have brought in, but we did have to scramble. So between those two projects, you had about 14 postdoctoral researchers and around 16 graduate students that were already working on those projects. So yeah, we had to scramble pretty hard to move people around so that we didn't have to lay them off in case these projects could actually get going and, you know, when you commit to a student, you don't want to kind of dashed their dreams. So you do everything you can to try and make sure that works. So fortunately, we had some other projects that weren't canceled in other areas that we were able to move people around to, work we do with industry. And then the university itself, you know, the faculty came together, approached the vice president for research and said they'd be willing to take some of them on if it was necessary. So quite a period of adjustment, a lot of uncertainty for students, because not only was that where their money was coming from, but that was where their research topic was coming from. So that might mean that some of them will have to pivot to new topics, and that's a lot of stress if you've ever been a graduate student.
KC Counts:
Yes. I feel for them. Why don't, with the time we have left, you just tell us a little bit about the Four Corners Carbon Storing Project, the importance of it, and what is disappointing about losing it?
Dr. Robert Balch:
So for the last 25 years or so, the Department of Energy has been really strongly focused on carbon storage. And New Mexico Tech had done a bunch of research in that time period. How do you do this safely, securely, cost-effectively, and the positive impacts that it can have on different types of energy projects? So in New Mexico, you have one coal plant left, and it's on the Navajo Nation. And that plant provides about 42% of the revenue, that plant and the mine. associated with provide about 42% of the revenue for the Navajo Nation. So with the New Mexico ETA, there's an external pressure, even though the power plant is on the reservation, there's an external pressure from PNM and other utilities to buy their electricity to meet the Energy Transition Act for New Mexico. It was put out in 2019. So we've been working with the nation on what they call the Carbon Safe Project. These are very big demonstration projects where you find the locations where the CO2 can be stored in the subsurface. You help them, the power plant, understand the conversion that they need to put the capture equipment on their systems, and you do some economic analysis. So that's canceling this project really puts that power plant in danger. Not immediately, because the Navajo Nation does have a lot of autonomy. And with the Trump administration, they can basically say, well, we're just going to keep doing it. But at some point in the future, there may be another administration change, and then the pressure would be back on. So for me, the things I worry about are baseload power. So that basic power that, you know, that runs all 24 hours of the day that can really help boost the use of renewables because they don't always operate is really important. And if you can decarbonize that, you actually meet the New Mexico ETA. And then there's also an economic benefit to the Navajo Nation from tax credits for carbon storage, which would havenetted a couple of billion dollars a year. So these things are all on hold. There's another project for doing methane capture at existing wellhead sites. Methane, of course, a very potent greenhouse gas as well. So the companies that we were working with, both along with the... Navajos and for the methane reduction project they're all on hold too and some of them have put can you know considerable resources towards these projects and much like the rest of us are just kind of waiting to see what happens and some of them maybe maybe we'll be okay but some places where these projects were canceled they'll just never come back because the teams will fall apart so really it's about managing emissions of greenhouse gases that are gonna be impacted in the state, but also jobs, and then the student impact that I talked about before.
KC Counts:
All right, anything you think is important for people to know that I haven't asked you about yet?
Dr. Robert Balch:
There's a little bit of irony that the state of New Mexico just passed a few hundred-billion-dollar fund that projects that were canceled can apply to to continue in some way, but because we're in this limbo, we can't even apply to that. Because we haven't been fully canceled, so you can't apply for replacement funds, so by the time maybe DOE is done with us, all the hospitals and stuff will have already picked up all the money.
KC Counts:
That's really between a rock and a hard place, isn't it?
Dr. Robert Balch:
A little bit. So, we're scientists and engineers, so we're adapting as the new policy proposals are coming out. We're switching to things like geothermal and critical minerals and things like that, and it's never a comfortable transition. Having a big load of students that were set to do something else at the same time is a definite challenge.
KC Counts:
Well, thank you for telling us all about it here on KRWG. Dr. Balch, we appreciate your time.
Dr. Robert Balch:
Thank you.
You can learn more about the Petroleum Recovery Research Center at New Mexico Tech right here.
