"Falling Demand Pressures Crude Oil Prices"--Dover's Magazine

Crude oil prices are nearly $5 lower than last weeks record high of $135 per barrel, as investors and speculators are convinced that demand is weakening. Reports from several media outlets in the past week have carried predictions of significantly higher oil prices, including that of Texas oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens who predicted $150 oil. But several economic measures suggest higher prices are cutting American consumers appetite for gasoline. The national average price for gasoline this week was up 7 cents to a record $3.944 per gallon.

National average prices for diesel also rose to a new record this week, adding a cent to average $4.778 nationally. High diesel prices are pushing the prices of consumer goods and food higher. Gasoline prices already average more than $4 per gallon in 11 states. The Energy Department said that demand for gasoline declined 1.1 percent in March, and they expect to report a decline over the Memorial Day weekend, although that data wont be available until next week. Despite this weeks decline in crude prices, analysts expect gasoline and diesel prices will continue to rise in the coming weeks. - Greg Henderson, editor

"'Hippie' defense red herring for gas derived profits"--SF New Mexican

It's a sign of our surreal times when the people trying to protect Santa Fe County from the horrors of drilling are blamed for record-high fuel costs. Never mind that the soaring prices are the fault of the international commodities market and multibillion-dollar energy corporations, industry will have you believe it's all because of those damn hippies.

As if there's even enough oil in the Galisteo Basin to make a dent in the national supply. The one well that Tecton Energy operated there, before temporarily abandoning, early this year, produced fewer than 50 total barrels of oil in nine months.

The company probably used more oil to fuel its semi-trucks, generators and drilling rig than it extracted from that dismal failure of a well.

What the company is really after — and is hoping you won't notice — is natural gas. No offense to those of you who know this, but I've heard and read enough bizarre comments to necessitate adding these lines: Gasoline is a nasty distillate refined from oil. There is very little oil left to extract in New Mexico. What I'm talking about is the "unconventional recovery" of natural gas and probably coal-bed methane. By "gas" I do not mean "gasoline."

As with oil, there's no guarantee that whatever gas is trapped deep beneath the surface can be released and recovered. The geologic formations in the Galisteo Basin and surrounding areas are so tight, they make any oil and gas operation risky and costly. It's a gamble, but played with human lives, not poker chips.

Gas drilling is tearing up the Rocky Mountains, from Montana to New Mexico. Live in a gasfield — and I know people who have — and you'll think you've gone to hell. Day and night, flare stacks burn methane, sulfur and other noxious gases — a ticking firebomb in our often tinder-dry land.

Toxic pits of antifreeze, carcinogens and even radioactive substances stagnate on private property, killing any animal that mistakes them for ponds.

County expects new drilling rules by February

Excerpts: Mora County, whose residents have been approached by at least one landman seeking to lease mineral rights in the area, passed an indefinite ban on oil and gas drilling May 20, which will remain in effect until the county finishes a rewrite of the document that governs development in the rural county northeast of Santa Fe. The Mora County Commission chairman said the moratorium will stay in effect until the Development Guidance System is "revised and fitted to the county's needs, whether it takes two months, three months, a year."

Drilling Mora County, an activist group similar to Drilling Santa Fe, has sprung up in Mora. "We are working to help educate people to understand what happens to an agricultural area when an industry like oil and gas comes in," said organizer Kathleen Dudley. "We want people to understand if they choose to have oil and gas come into the county, their way of life will be changed. (But) as long as they are actually choosing it in a democratic process, then it's legitimate."