FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New Mexico Adopts Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program for Industry

In Pioneering Move, State Will Capture Oil and Gas Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Contacts:
     Tom Singer, Ph.D., Natural Resources Defense
     Council, tsinger@nrdc.org, 505.231.1070

     Jeremy Nichols, Rocky Mountain Clean Air Action,  
     rmcleanair@gmail.com, 303.454.3370

     Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, Attorney, Western 
     Environmental Law Center, eriksg@westernlaw.org,  
     505.751.0351

Over the course of the last two days, advocacy groups, in conjunction with the New Mexico Environment Department, presented testimony demonstrating global warming’s impacts to New Mexico and our need to better understand greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions to support aggressive reduction efforts. The result: for the first time, major sources of global warming pollution in New Mexico, including power plants, oil refineries, and cement plants, must now report GHG emissions. New Mexico is the second state in the U.S. West and one of only a few in the nation to require GHG emissions reporting. In a pioneering move, the EIB also targeted GHG emissions – in particular methane – from oil and natural gas operations.

 “The oil and gas industry is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases in New Mexico and we need to understand the sources and magnitude of these emissions,” stated Tom Singer, Ph.D., of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “By establishing this program, the EIB again demonstrated New Mexico’s game-changing leadership on global warming and has taken a critical first step to support the important collaborative efforts underway by U.S. States & Tribes, Mexican States, and Canadian Provinces that hope to get a real handle on the problem.”

 The inclusion of methane was a key victory; methane emissions are a common byproduct of oil and gas operations and, as a global warming pollutant, 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Critically, strategies that reduce methane not only help combat global warming, but also yield a payback to the oil and gas industry. In New Mexico, methane reductions from the oil and gas industry have been found to yield the greatest cost-effective reductions in GHG gases and Governor Richardson has called for a 20% reduction in oil and gas methane emissions by 2020.

 According to Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, an attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center representing the advocacy groups, “the reporting framework established by the EIB is a product of hard work and negotiations with the New Mexico Environment Department. We now look forward to working with the Department and the oil and gas industry to implement, without delay, greenhouse gas reductions from this important sector of our economy.”

 As Jeremy Nichols, Executive Director of Rocky Mountain Clean Air Action, and an expert on oil and gas air quality emissions, explained, “understanding GHG pollution from the oil and gas industry is key to combating global warming and also ensures more money for industry and more product in the pipelines for homes, schools, and business. It’s common sense: when the oil and gas industry reduces greenhouse gases, we all win. ”

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