“We’re dependent on an industry that we have no control over,” said State Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard, who oversees oil and gas leases on state-owned land.
From relishing the thought of a more than $3 billion windfall in oil and gas revenues in February to a nearly $2 billion state budget shortfall by March. It’s the situation in New Mexico where the state’s share of the Permian Basin has gone from oil boom to bust.
It had been a record-breaking year of production in the Permian Basin, one that had state leaders, including Gov. Lujan Grisham gushing about a “moonshot for education.”
“The moonshot was quite frankly a fiasco, given a revenue stream that relies on oil and gas,” said one legislator who was quoted in an extensive story by SearchLight New Mexico, an independent investigative journalism group.
Click here to read the story.
