New Mexico anti-fracking bill gets tabled

The anti-fracking bill got drilled in committee.

The first-ever legislation introduced in the Roundhouse that would ban the practice of hydraulic fracturing in the oil and gas industry in New Mexico was tabled on a 8-2 vote, with four Democrats siding with the four Republicans in the Senate Conservation Committee.

Senate Bill 547 was sponsored by freshman Sen. Bill Soules, D-Las Cruces, and would have declared a state of emergency in New Mexico and, in its original form, the legislation called for an outright prohibition on hydraulic fracturing.

But on Saturday, Sen. Soules introduced an committee substitute that would exempt the Oil Patch area in southeast New Mexico and the Four Corners area in the northwest area of the state, which makes up 80 percent of the affected areas of the state and 95 percent of the areas where wells are drilled.

Sen. Soules said the substitute is “a recognition of the amount of money in the (state’s) Permanent Fund and the budget problems (a ban) could cause” and the amended bill would be aimed at keep fracking out of what he called “frontier zones” in the remainder in the state. “It’s trying to strike a balance between those two,” Soules said.

According to analysts at the Legislative Finance Committee, oil, gas and extractive industries accounted for $1.7 billion in severance taxes in fiscal year 2012, with more than half of  that total going to public schools and higher education in the state.

Sen. Joseph Cervantes, D-Las Cruces, said he had problems with the bill’s exemptions.

“I think we ought to either ban fracking or not ban fracking, not to pretend to ban fracking,” Sen. Cervantes said. “That’s what the committee sub does, it pretends to ban fracking.”

Supporters of the bill criticized hydraulic fracturing, saying the practice threatens the environment and endangers ground water but oil and gas defenders say there have been no verified cases of contamination of drinking water due to fracking.

“I just want to let you people who want to ban this to know that I want clean water, I want clean air,” said Sen. Benny Shendo, a Democrat from the Jemez Pueblo, “but I also want our community to have jobs … These are difficult decisions we have to make.”

During public discussion of the bill, detractors and supporters of the SB547 spoke passionately about their positions, including one anti-fracking advocate who broke out into an Amy Winehouse song, adapting the words to say, “You want to kill the planet, we say, no, no, no.”

In the end, Republicans Bill Payne, Pat Woods, John Ryan and Bill Sharer voted to table the bill and were joined by Democrats Phil Griego, Richard Martinez, Shendo and Cervantes.

Democrats Peter Wirth and Soules voted no on the tabling motion.