Irony: Otero County Freezing, No Natural Gas

In one of life’s great ironies, senior citizens living in Otero County New Mexico reported to us that they ran out of natural gas this week. They were bundled in blankets and literally freezing in their homes. All of this was occurring while elected officials in Santa Fe continued to block all efforts to drill for natural gas at Otero Mesa. On November 2nd even the most casual of political observers realized that the election victory by Ray Powell Jr. (as state Land Commissioner) meant it would be a cold day in hell before the natural resources of Otero Mesa were tapped for the benefit of the citizens of New Mexico on his watch. Adding insult to the injuries of residents of Otero County this week (and all other counties in the frigid state) were the actions of House Energy Committee Chairman Brian Egolf.
Ray Powell Jr.
Representative Egolf has made it clear he will do everything in his power to fight the elimination of radical environmental restrictions that might actually bring more access and production of energy to the state. The only exception to Egolf’s anti-energy stance is a curious willingness to take millions of dollars out of state coffers to subsidize “green” energy schemes that cannot provide warmth to the citizens of the state.
It would seem that when New Mexico needs common sense the most, simply to bring something essential such as home heating during record cold temperatures to its residents, too many of our elected officials continue to insist on drinking from the global warming kool-aid cups. How many New Mexicans will fall ill or freeze to death before reason prevails? Nobody knows.


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3 comments:

Laugh67 said...

Harsh circumstances can often become the catalyst for change. I can only hope that this unusual winter storm will work as a catalyst to bring people to their senses to realize that those legislators that force New Mexico to be energy poor need to go! The policies and desires of Egoff and those like him have put many New Mexicans at risk this winter.

Paul said...

All the wells in the world in Otero Mesa would not have fixed the NG pressure problem. As discussed by JavalinaTex in comment #2 on Master Resource http://www.masterresource.org/2011/02/texas-winter-power-outages-ercot/ , the compressor stations have been shifting from site-generated power to utility power due to air emissions requirements, which is fine by me as long as that power source is reliable. Unfortunately, as the main article relates, ERCOT is an intentional power island.

Interesting fact #1: 20 yrs ago, the South Texas Nuclear Project (SNTP) was unable to supply power during a cold snap, as related here: http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=1990_675974 and http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=1990_676488 , but SNTP must have fixed their problems because both units 1 and 2 ran at 100% capacity during the recent cold wave.

Interesting Fact #2: At the EPE news conference yesterday http://www.kvia.com/video/26752422/index.html , one of the EPE upper management people pointed out that because EPE's gnerators were not online, it actually mitigated some of the residential NG problems. Of course, if you don't have electricity to your home, it's hard to power the forced air blower in your furnace, even if you use propane like I do.

Interesting fact #3: Reliance on NG to provide electricity, heating (home, business and industrial) and chemical feedstock is very short-sighted. It depends on the assumption that NG is and will be plentiful and cheap. as the NYT reported on Feb 1st, that may not always be the case. http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/nat... And if NG prices do spike higher, standby for both higher hme heating prices http://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n3050us3m.htm and higher electricity prices http://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n3045us3m.htm .

Interesting Fact #4: The same groups that are promoting wind power are also advocating for NG as a "bridge fuel", but against NG drilling. http://drillingsantafe.blogspot.com/ and http://www.sanjuancitizens.org/index.shtml

Anonymous said...

Ray Powell and Egolf are enemies of the people and friends to the loon lobby.

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