Longtime New Mexico oilman hopes to drill in Valencia County

In New Mexico, the Yates household identify is synonymous with oil and gasoline improvement, and the household patriarch, Harvey E. Yates Jr., is now making use of that heritage to virgin lands in Valencia County.

Jalapeño Corp. — Yates’ Albuquerque-based oil and gasoline drilling and exploration firm — is actively assessing the geology and subsurface hydrocarbon potential on lands across the county that the Yates household both owns outright, or that it has acquired subsurface mineral rights to discover, Yates instructed the Journal in a current interview.

Between owned property and subsurface mineral rights, Yates’ holdings embody at the least 20,000 acres, totally on the county’s east aspect, which Yates largely acquired within the early Eighties from Horizon Land Corp., an actual property firm that at one time owned a few quarter of all of the land within the county.

Yates’ acquired these holdings largely to probe for oil and gasoline, however he has additionally pursued different makes use of, akin to ranching and a few industrial improvement.

Now, nevertheless, Jalapeño Corp. is immediately centered on drilling into potential hydrocarbons trapped within the Albuquerque Basin under these lands, one thing Yates has envisioned for greater than 4 a long time.

“I’m an outdated man — 80 years outdated — and I need to see a discovery there whereas I’m nonetheless alive,” Yates instructed the Journal. “I’m intent on performing some drilling.”

Undeveloped basin

The Albuquerque Basin is an unlimited, undeveloped zone probably wealthy in hydrocarbons that roughly stretches from the northern desert space in between Albuquerque and Santa Fe to Bernardo within the south, and from the Sandia and Manzano Mountains within the east to the Rio Puerco within the west.

Sporadic drilling tasks across the basin date again to between World Warfare I and II. However most exploration again then centered on shallow zones that maintain much less business potential, relatively than the deep shale and sandstone layers the place oil and gasoline are extra possible trapped at some 20,000 ft down, or about 4 miles deep, mentioned Ron Broadhead, petroleum geologist emeritus with the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Assets at New Mexico Tech in Socorro.

Within the Nineteen Seventies and early Eighties, Shell Oil Co. drilled a lot deeper to probe for business potential, offering much more geologic info that inspired some additional exploration by different corporations within the Nineties and early 2000s. However none led to business manufacturing, possible due to the elevated prices and threat for deep drilling in a brand new basin at a time of low costs and lack of recent hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling applied sciences that would penetrate into mineral wealthy zones.

“No person ever actually discovered sufficient to warrant business improvement, though with as we speak’s fashionable applied sciences, it’s attainable,” Broadhead instructed the Journal.

Yates now believes these fashionable methods may crack open productive areas in Valencia County.

“There’s very sturdy proof of hydrocarbons within the Valencia County space,” Yates mentioned. “… For my part, it’s a potential space, however with loads of threat.”

Jalapeño Corp. would possible drill in three totally different potential zones to check for potential.

“We’d hope for at the least one nicely to hit,” Yates mentioned. “We need to transfer on with it, however it’s going to nonetheless take some extra geologic evaluation first.”

Yates declined to disclose particular goal zones. But when exploratory drilling, and finally business operations, do happen, it could possible be situated close to interstate pipelines that already run by Valencia County south of Belen. That’s as a result of the state’s new methane guidelines require gasoline improvement to happen close to the infrastructure wanted to seize and transport it to keep away from venting and flaring.

“I received’t say particularly the place,” Yates mentioned. “Nevertheless it’s a very good guess that our first nicely or wells can be near a pipeline, and Valencia County is blessed with two interstate pipelines that undergo it.”

Overlay zone

Yates mentioned he approached Valencia County officers over the previous 12 months concerning subsurface mineral exploration, as a result of present zoning and regulation makes drilling very tough in most locations, if not inconceivable.

“I requested for a map of mineral useful resource districts, and once they lastly produced one, it was inaccurate and confirmed nearly no place the place you possibly can drill,” Yates mentioned. “I recommended to a county commissioner there and a lawyer that we ought to have the ability to discover down there. … They’d created an overlay zone for photo voltaic improvement and it appeared to me an overlay zone is perhaps created for mineral exploration as nicely.”

The County Fee did approve a brand new “pure useful resource overlay zone” on Could 3 that will probably permit for exploratory oil and gasoline drilling, which commissioners shall be discussing once more at Wednesday’s biweekly assembly.

“The overlay zone doesn’t really authorize drilling anywhere, however it provides the chance to use for county approval,” Yates mentioned. “I guarantee you, if we do apply, it received’t be close to properties, however it’s going to possible be close to the pipelines.”

Commissioner Joseph Bizzell, who sponsored the overlay ordinance, mentioned county attorneys drafted the ordinance, and he has no direct relationship with Yates. Nevertheless, Jalapeño Corp. donated $1,500 to Bizzell’s 2020 election, representing the majority of cash Bizzell raised in that marketing campaign, based on data from the New Mexico Secretary of State’s Workplace.

Yates attended the Could 3 fee assembly and spoke in favor of the overlay ordinance. He additionally gave suggestions on it earlier than the fee assembly, suggesting modifications to the preliminary draft proposal, Yates instructed the Journal.