Beneath a giant methane gas cloud recently identified by NASA, the oil and gas fracking industry is rapidly expanding in northwestern New Mexico. Flares that light up the night sky at drilling sites along the stretch of Route 550 that passes through the San Juan Basin, which sits on top of the oil rich Mancos Shale, are tell-tale indicators of the fracking boom.
Much of the land being fracked belongs to the federal government. The rest is a mixture of state, private and Navajo Nation land.
The region is known to the Diné (Navajo) as Dinétah, the land of their ancestors. It is home of the Bisti Badlands and Chaco Culture National Historical Park, a World Heritage Site.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is tasked with managing resources on federal land including leasing land for extraction.
“The BLM jumped the gun on fracking for oil in the area,” Mike Eisenfeld, New Mexico energy coordinator for San Juan Citizens Alliance, told DeSmogBlog.
The agency’s last resource management plan for the area was created in 2003 before drilling in the Mancos Shale region was considered technically or economically viable.