Carlsbad Current Argus (Oct. 21, 2022) – Southeast New Mexico saw some of is highest oil production in the last decade, with the most barrels of crude oil reported produced in 2021 in the history of the region, said Hanson Yates, president of Artesia-based Santo Petroleum.
Santo is drilling two new wells in the Carlsbad area, Yates said, and planned to continue targeting the region for future growth.
At the Carlsbad Mayor’s Energy Summit Thursday, Yates rallied for fossil fuel production in the region encompassing parts of Eddy, Lea, Chaves and Roosevelt counties, calling for expanded domestic operations centered on the Permian and the western Delaware sub-basin.
He said heightened growth in the Delaware, which covers southeast New Mexico’s portion of the Permian, began in the 2010s when horizontal wells were half of about 11,000 new wells drilled that decade.
“In the 2010s, southeast New Mexico began a time of increased growth in oil and gas,” Yates said. “It’s really a golden age.”
Two years into the 2020s, Yates said growth was expected to continue and could even overtake the “golden age.”
The last eight years were the eighth most productive in southeast New Mexico’s history, Yates said, and 2022 could already be considered the fourth-most productive year with more than two months left.
