SOAE 2020: This is Las Cruces
Mark Green
Posted January 17, 2020
API’s State of American Energy report is focused on the growth and empowerment that natural gas and oil provide to communities across the United States. Las Cruces, New Mexico, is one of them. Thanks to abundant, affordable energy, cities and towns like Las Cruces are on the move, with opportunity expanding before them. Here’s a video:
While Las Cruces isn’t a major natural gas and oil producing area like the Permian in the southeast, folks there know that the availability of energy fuels progress across all sectors. Luis Morales, researcher and founder of a new energy-related startup, H-Trap One:
“Energy fuels everything. It’s not just economics. It’s also building infrastructure, investing in education, letting businesses thrive and providing a way for everyone to have a life that they can enjoy.”
Energy factors into state agricultural output as well. Marshall Wilson (pictured below), from Adams Produce in nearby Hatch, New Mexico, which is famous for its chiles:
“Energy affects everything we do, whether it’s the fertilizer that’s produced from natural gas or the diesel fuel for tractors, pumps and transportation. These are all bottom-line considerations for farmers. Even the power we use on-site to process the crops and support electric well pumps ties back to energy production.”
Natural gas and oil have an impact – more than 27,000 direct jobs in the 2nd Congressional District, where Las Cruces is located, as well as 51,000 other jobs supported. The importance of energy goes beyond our industry itself, creating opportunity and economic expansion in other sectors as well.
Natural gas and oil also contributed $3.1 billion to the state budget in fiscal year 2019 for public priorities such as schools, bridges, water treatment plans and more. A program for free college tuition for all state residents, largely funded by natural gas and oil revenues, has been announced. As API’s new campaign puts it, this is energy progress – progress in Las Cruces and places all over the U.S. API President and CEO Mike Sommers, during a speech in Albuquerque last fall:
“From Colorado and New Mexico to Ohio and Pennsylvania, natural gas and oil development is energizing economies and improving millions of lives.”
About The Author
Mark Green joined API after a career in newspaper journalism, including 16 years as national editorial writer for The Oklahoman in the paper’s Washington bureau. Previously, Mark was a reporter, copy editor and sports editor at an assortment of newspapers. He earned his journalism degree from the University of Oklahoma and master’s in journalism and public affairs from American University. He and his wife Pamela have two grown children and six grandchildren.