A federal judge has blocked President Joe Biden's ban on leases and permits for oil and gas drilling on federal land.
Louisiana Judge Terry Doughty issued a preliminary injunction June 15 to prevent the enforcement of the moratorium, which Biden had put in force the first week he took office back in January in an effort to combat climate change.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard the news, but a federal judge temporarily struck down Biden's ban on drilling on public land,” U.S. Rep. Yvette Herrell (R-Alamogordo) said in a June 15 video on Twitter. “This is a big day and I can't wait to see where this goes.”
Herrell had warned that the ban violated the law and Constitution in a bipartisan letter sent to the Biden administration three months ago.
“We have been standing strong for the energy independence our nation deserves for the jobs that these producers put into play, and for the people that have fought so hard to ensure that we have a clean environment, but also utilizing our fossil fuels,” Herrell said in the Twitter video. “So with this big news, we will keep beating the drum, we will keep fighting for the industry.”
The New Mexico GOP recently sent a letter to Biden expressing their disapproval of Democrats' support for the land-leasing pause. The GOP letter was a counter to another letter sent to the president by state Democrats in support of the moratorium.
“We believe any extension of the current pause-and-review policy will have a devastating impact on New Mexico, especially on the students, families and teachers who are part of our state's public education system,” New Mexico's GOP wrote in its letter. “We cannot devastate our economy and our livelihoods by supporting a federal regulatory scheme that fails to recognize the importance of our state's oil and gas industry, and the jobs and the revenues it generates to provide needed services for our citizens.”
According to the NM GOP, approximately 40% or $3 billion of the New Mexico budget is directly attributable to revenue from the state's fossil fuel industry.
The New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions says that there are 8,500 wind and solar industry jobs potentially available as the state transitions away from the fossil fuel industry but, according to the NM GOP letter, over 130,000 jobs will be lost in the state's oil industry during the transition.
A recent independent report says that the New Mexico oil and gas industry could be devastatingly costly, however. The study found that the state's petroleum drillers would only be able to cover about $200 million in abandoned well and pipeline cleanup. The cleanup, in a worst-case scenario, would cost as much as $8.3 billion.