Ukraine: How New Mexico Can Help

Drill, baby, drill -- and cripple Russia's exports of natural gas

Vladimir Putin, one can safely assume, knows nothing about Tucumcari.

But the New Mexico city once known as Ragtown — later, Six Shooter Siding — sits atop a rich hydrocarbon reservoir. It’s one of many energy motherlodes the Unites States is blessed to possess. And it’s an asset that Ukraine’s globe-spanning supporters should recognize as a tool with impressive potential.

The Tucumcari Basin “stretches from San Ignacio … on the west to central Quay County … on the east and from Fort Sumner on the south to Trementina on the north.” Long ago, “thick sections of organically rich shales” were deposited there, and “when buried, were turned into thermally mature source rocks of oil and gas.”

Natural gas, that is. New Mexico is full of it. In January alone, the state produced over 10 billion cubic feet of the stuff. Since 2013, when production in the modern era hit its lowest point, the Land of Enchantment has nearly doubled its gross withdrawals.

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration

The fracking revolution greatly aided the state’s production explosion. But conventional drilling continues to make a contribution, as does coalbed methane. The Land of Enchantment taps natural gas in multiples ways, and in several places.

The Tucumcari Basin remains an undeveloped play, with none of the region’s counties — e.g., De Baca, Quay, Curry, Guadalupe — producing any natural gas today. But there’s little doubt that with enough investment, things could change.

Which brings us back to Vlad the Mad. One of the reasons Russia can build tanks and fighters and thermobaric weapons is the revenue it derives from selling so much of its extracted resources. The “European Union sources almost 40 per cent of its natural gas from Russia, much of it flowing through Ukraine.” And one of the best ways to cripple Putin’s energy power is to greatly expand American exports of LNG.

When chilled to hundreds of degrees below zero, natural gas liquifies, reducing its volume by a factor of 600. And in December, the U.S. became “the world’s leading exporter” of LNG. More export capacity is coming online. With Europe following the “green” playbook, and cutting its natural-gas production by more than a third between 2004 and 2020, the Continent has many eager customers.

Source: Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, “EU Gas: Diversity of Supply or Diversity of Routes?”

The mind of a moonbat contains many contradictions. But even Sierra Club donors can’t be so obtuse as to fail to see the connection between expanding LNG exports and defunding Russian aggression. Natural gas is good for the environment and great for jobs — and selling more of it to Europe hurts Putin. So Michelle Lujan Grisham, Martin Heinrich, and Melanie Stansbury will soon endorse policies that vastly expand production in New Mexico. Right?