Land and Resources

Colfax County Backs Down on Coal Bed Methane Drilling

By Eric Mack, 12-23-05

A rural New Mexico county in the northeast corner of the state has backed down and agreed to lease the rights to extract coal-bed methane under a state highway to El Paso Corporation.

Colfax County had requested a bigger share of royalties from coal bed methane gas that could be extracted from far beneath the state road, which runs over a county-owned right of way. But it soon became clear that the county was in no position to negotiate. That’s because the New Mexico Oil Conservation Division has the power to force the county to go ahead with the lease at the request of El Paso if it were to find that the county was being unreasonable in its demands. What exactly would be considered unreasonable is not clear.

“It’s essentially eminent domain, is what it boils down to,� explained Roy Johnson from the OCD.

So the Colfax County Commissioners opted to take El Paso’s previous offer and avoid the penalties that OCD also has the authority to assess if the lease were to be blocked.

For the past few years El Paso has been running a drilling operation on Ted Turner’s Vermejo Park Ranch. Hwy. 555 runs through the drilling area, connecting Raton with the ranch. Colfax County Manager Tom Garcia explained that El Paso could already be taking gas from under the road.

“There’s several wells near the highway,� he said. “Some of the gas (currently being removed) could be coming from a pocket under the right of way.�

In addition to clearing up potential legal issues over compensation for current drilling operations, the lease allows El Paso to target gas in the right of way through directional drilling.

El Paso’s Vermejo Park operation is adjacent to the Valle Vidal Unit of the Carson National Forest, a section of federal lands that the company has also targeted for CBM drilling. The proposal has met stiff opposition from conservation and recreational use advocacy groups. Last week, the state of New Mexico designated the Valle Vidal waters an “Outstanding National Resource,� increasing protections under the Clean Water Act.

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