Ping.
The ruling has huge economic and political ramifications covering the Permian Basin and Eastern New Mexico oil fields.
I can’t even begin to describe how great the economies are in West Texas and Eastern New Mexico. Grocery store clerks are earning upwards of $15 an hour with all the hours they want. Waitresses/Waiters are pulling in several hundred a day in tips. Cooks with experience who can start today are getting cash bonuses on the spot. Entry level roustabouts can easily get $29 an hour with guaranteed overtime and paid on the job training.
Long story short – Every person who wants a job has one and not just in the oil field.
Listing the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard sets in motions a chain of costly regulation and significant increases in property usage restrictions that will create an effective shutdown of the entire region.
So the question is will Salazar and Obama disappoint their leftist base, the EPA and the environmentalist agenda on this one? Or does he prove once and for all that he will do whatever it takes to disrupt the energy industry, kill jobs, and drive up energy prices? The Romney ads would write themselves.
The only safe play here is to punt the decision to January, but the opportunity to throw the government yoke onto one of the most historic and prolific energy fields in the US might be too much to resist.
The debate on whether to list this species as endangered has been rancorous on both sides, with the oil and gas industry opposed to the listing and environmentalists in favor of the listing. The decision was delayed for six months in January so Ashe could further study the data. In the meantime, voluntary conservation agreements that enable private landowners to set aside and preserve lands that the lizard occupies have apparently been working, according to the news report. Those conservation agreements enable private landowners to keep their rights to drill for oil as long as they work to preserve the habitat of the sagebrush lizard, which lives near shinnery oak trees in West Texas and New Mexico.
Approximately 95 percent of the lizard’s shinnery oak habitat in New Mexico has been enrolled in conservation agreements, and 70 percent of the reptile’s habitat in Texas has been enrolled since the plan was announced in February.