Oil and gas activity across federal, state and private lands contributes around a third of the state’s general fund of $7.2bn, as well as a third of its education budget. In 2021, 15% of the state’s general fund came from royalties, rents and other fees that the Department of the Interior collects from mineral extraction on federal lands. I ndustry attempts to convince New Mexicans that the state’s public education system is wholly dependent on oil and gas are based on a tough truth: decades of steep tax cuts have indeed positioned fossil fuels as the thunder behind Democratic-led New Mexico’s economy. Often, companies sit on leases for months or years before production occurs.Īnd as it happens, New Mexico currently has a budget surplus from record production. The sale of leases does not lead to immediate drilling, he said. “Any slight reductions stemming from pauses or other so-called ‘adverse’ actions would have zero immediate effect on school funding overall, much less whether students get the services they need to recover from the ill effects on their learning from the pandemic,” said Charles Goodmacher, former government and media relations director at the National Education Association (NEA), now a consultant. “This is a matter of critical importance to all, but especially to New Mexico’s schoolchildren, who have suffered greatly during the pandemic,” state representative Yvette Herrell co-wrote in the Santa Fe New Mexican, in February.īut tax, budget and public education funding experts say linking the federal leasing pause to a grave, immediate risk to public education is deceptive. Elected officials have parroted this framing. Since February, NMOGA has flooded its social media pages with school-related motifs like buses and books, but also with images of empty, abandoned classrooms accompanied by reminders about how the state’s schools “rely on oil and gas production on federal land for more than $700m in funding”. In response, pro-industry groups are pushing out what some experts have called “sky is falling” messaging that generates the impression that without oil and gas revenue, the state’s education system is on a chopping block. Before mid-April, the Biden administration had paused all new oil and gas leasing and the number of drilling permits on public lands plummeted. But the tides may be turning for the fossil fuel industry as officials grapple with the need to halve greenhouse gas emissions this decade. Last year, New Mexico brought in $1.1bn from mineral leasing on federal lands – more than any other US state. Oil and gas industries are 4% of New Mexico’s GDP “What NMOGA and the oil and gas industry are saying is that we hold New Mexico’s public education system hostage to our profit-motivated interests,” said Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, executive director of the Western Environmental Law Center. It’s one of many similar strategies the Guardian tracked across social media, television and audio formats that employs a rhetorical strategy social scientists refer to as the “fossil fuel savior frame”. The video, from September last year, is part of a PR campaign by NMOGA called “Safer and Stronger”. “The partnership we have with the oil and gas industry makes me a better teacher.” “Without oil and gas, we would not have the resources to provide an exemplary education for our students,” she says. In a video spot exemplary of this strategy, Ashley Niman, a fourth-grade teacher at Enchanted Hills elementary school tells viewers that the industry is what enables her to do her job. Powerful interest groups have deployed a months-long campaign to depict schools and children’s wellbeing as under threat if government officials infringe upon fossil fuel production. Their latest tactic: to position oil and gas as a patron saint of education. Here in New Mexico – the fastest-warming and most water-stressed state in the continental US, where wildfires have recently devoured over 120,000 acres and remain uncontained – the oil and gas industry is coming out in force to deepen the region’s dependence on fossil fuels.
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