Jimenez: State Cannot Continue To Leave Taxpayers On Hook For Cleaning Up After the Oil & Gas Industry NMVFC News: ALBUQUERQUE — James Jimenez, executive director of New Mexico Voices for Children, issued the following statement regarding the report recently released from the Center for Applied Research: “The report released today demonstrates how inadequate bonding levels are for oil and natural gas extraction on state and private fee lands. We are grateful to Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard and the State Land Office for their commitment to our state lands and meaningful bonding reform. “It’s distressing that New Mexico taxpayers could be on the hook for more than $8 billion – more than our entire annual state budget – in clean-up costs for the tens of thousands of wells and miles of pipeline that would be abandoned should the companies operating them go bankrupt. And this doesn’t even account for the nearly 32,000 wells and associated pipelines on New Mexico’s federal public lands.