Santa Fe, NM–Today, Attorney General Hector Balderas announced that the State of New Mexico, along with California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, and the California Air Resources Board prevailed in their lawsuit challenging the Trump Administration’s attempt to repeal the Waste Prevention Rule, a commonsense measure to reduce the enormous waste of natural gas on public lands. The rule requires oil and natural gas producers to take cost-effective measures to cut the wasteful leakage of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, on federal and tribal lands. Nearly 35 % of New Mexico is federally administered, and the state contains the second highest area of federal land leased for oil and gas production – more than four million acres – producing almost 900 million mcf of natural gas in 2018.
