Here on the west side of the Great Divide its $3.52 for regular and $4.10 for diesel. Obama has shut drilling permits down to nothing. The oil producing areas of Utah have laid off over 5,000 oil field workers. Many oil field related companies have closed their doors. Yes, it will get much worse. I was talking to a Wyoming driller today. He said the BLM was supporting Green activist in their war on oil exploration. A law suite may soon be filed over this. 
Down here on the east side of the divide in the Permian Basin things are BOOMING. A great deal of the basin in NM is BLM land and it's busy. Of course in Texas it's private property so the feds have no say and it's busy too. I walked into the WalMart in Midland, TX Tuesday and they have a sign sitting in the door where you couldn't miss it. It says "WalMart has raised starting wages $1.50 per hour". A lot of the businesses there and up here in NM have signs in the front saying "now hiring" and most are in some part of the oil industry. I've been approached twice in the last two weeks in businesses asking me if I have grandchildren that would be interested in working for them and another guy asked if I had any idea where to find someone wanting to work and he was offering $25 an hour, medical, dental, and vision insurance, 401 plan and very generous days off, no experience needed. Said he need 20 people and couldn't find anyone interested. In the last boom when unemployment was only 1.8% I never had anyone ask me this. There were plenty of "help wanted" signs out then but no one was beating the bushes.
What everyone here is holding their breath over is the fact that the US Fish &Wildlife Dept. is considering listing the sand dune lizard as endangered and like all federal agencies they speak from both sides of their mouths. One spokesperson is saying it will have no effect on the oil field, ranching, or any other activity where the lizard lives. Another is saying they do no economic impact studies before listing and can after listing but probably won't do a study at all. Add in the fact that the only study that has been done on the lizard shows them to have actually increased in numbers where there is human activity and decreased where there is none. All I can see is the damage that listing the prairie chicken and spotted owl has caused. Oil field activity was greatly curtailed in the prairie chicken's habitat and the owl deal basically destroyed the timber industry in New Mexico.
This will also affect any place in Texas where the lizard lives, private land not withstanding. The lizard is supposed to live in a very limited part of NM and TX in the sand dune area. I live quite a few miles from the sandy areas, in fact it is rocky here. I have little lizards running around that are twins as far as I can tell from color patterns to the sand dune ones. Oh well, what do I know compared to the feds and the environmental group that is pushing for this listing. Maybe we can get some wolves released here and they will eat the little rascals and solve the problem.
It is said that this listing will pretty well destroy the public school system in NM as most of it's funding comes from severance taxes on oil. Also a big chunk of the general fund comes from the oil & gas industry. If all this happens we will make Mississippi look good when it comes to the poorest state in the nation.
