How big oil keeps a grip on New Mexico - with the help of a major lobbyist
Records show the firm FTI and its fossil fuel clients benefit from local government ties
Cody Nelson for Floodlight and Adrian Hedden for the Carlsbad Current-Argus
Sun 11 Jul 2021 06.00 EDT
When Joe Biden paused oil and gas drilling leases on federal lands earlier this year, the alarm bells rang in south-eastern New Mexico.
Officials in Eddy county – which, along with neighboring Lea county, holds New Mexico’s share of the oil- and gas-rich Permian Basin – immediately worried about potential economic fallout.
“This news is exceptionally disappointing,” county manager Allen Davis wrote in an email to colleagues. “The message couldn’t be more clear: south-east New Mexico is not a business friendly for an industry that has sustained the state of New Mexico finances for decades [sic].”
Situated in the Chihuahuan desert of New Mexico’s staunchly Republican south-east region, Eddy county is a rural, industrial area, where the top employers are in the mining and oil and gas industries. And county leaders appeared to be depending on their influential allies, including the international lobbying firm FTI Consulting, to keep it that way.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/11/pro-oil-gas-lobbying-influence-republican-new-mexico