A fairly amazing story rose to my attention this week when the American Petroleum Institute (API) noted in an X post that two counties in southeastern New Mexico—Lea and Eddy—now account for 78 percent of oil produced on federal lands in the U.S. onshore. It’s a stunning, unprecedented dominance by such a compact land footprint.
The reasons for this dominance are no secret: Lea and Eddy counties sit atop the heart of the prolific Delaware Basin, which makes up the western half of the greater Permian Basin region.
While the Delaware does extend south into Texas, the federal government owns very little land in the Lone Star State outside of its numerous military installations. It’s a different story in Lea and Eddy, where the feds own more than 60% of the acreage in Eddy County and roughly 30% in Lea.
These two counties, with a combined population of roughly 130,000, produced about 2.1 million barrels per day of total oil at the end of 2024. That output doesn’t just fuel the national grid and refineries; it fills state coffers with production taxes, royalties, and lease bonuses that benefit every New Mexican. Indeed, the oil and gas industry funds more than 40% of the state’s budget every year despite the best efforts of the majority Democrats to restrict the industry’s operations within its borders. It’s an agenda of economic self-destruction exceeded in scope and political aggression only by California.
API’s note came on the heels of the recent Bureau of Land Management $4 billion lease sale on those very lands in southeast New Mexico, an all-time record haul for such a sale in the Lower 48 states. Oklahoma City-based Devon Energy was by far the major bidder in that sale, but other companies like ExxonMobil, Oxy, EOG Resources and Mewbourne Oil are also quite active in the play. Part of the reason why that sale attracted such overwhelming interest stems from the fact that the Biden administration basically refused to hold the periodic lease sales required by federal law during its four years.
Therein lies the big threat to the future of southeast New Mexico’s unprecedented energy dominance: The Democratic candidate to become the state’s next governor is none other than Biden’s former Interior Secretary—lifelong anti-oil and gas activist Deb Haaland—the person who led the effort to shut down oil drilling on federal lands. Haaland, who easily won her primary contest on June 3, will face off against Republican Greg Hull in a state where Kamala Harris defeated Donald Trump by 6% in 2024.
Fortunately for America, Haaland’s attempt to halt drilling on federal lands in the Biden years was largely unsuccessful, especially in southeast New Mexico, where Devon and other big producers had the foresight to stockpile federal leases during the first Trump presidency. That smart planning exercise allowed those companies to exploit those federal leases during the Biden years, enabling them to actually keep overall production rising amid a hostile administration.
But now, one of the lead actors from that hostile federal administration threatens to play the lead role in what would no doubt become an even more overtly hostile state administration. While states have limited power to affect activities on federal lands, most oil and gas production in New Mexico is derived from big-acreage units made up of a mix of federal, state, Indian, and private land types. That fact of life in a state whose land maps resemble big checkerboards of intermingled lands governed by competing jurisdictions will provide Haaland and her officials ample opportunity for meddling.
Still, the lesson provided by Lea and Eddy counties is clear: America’s energy future depends on treating federal lands as the national assets they are, not political footballs. We cannot claim supply-chain resilience, AI dominance, or true energy security while leaving vast resources idle. Two counties in southeastern New Mexico prove what’s possible when industry, sound policy, and geology align.
Haaland will no doubt do her best to kill her state’s golden goose if she wins in November. But, as we saw during the Biden years, energy reality has a way of winning in the end.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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