Records show almost 30 boreholes drilled for oil in current Valencia County, including a borehole drilled to a depth of 14,305 feet at a location about 10 miles southwest of Los Lunas, and a hole drilled to 16,334 feet just south of the county line near Isleta.
No oil drilling in the county has led to oil production. Currently, there are no active oil leases on public lands in the county, according to TheDrillings.com and Mineralanswers.com, websites that track oil leases and production on public lands.
As reported in the recent book by Dirk Van Hart (New Mexico’s Magnificent Sandia Mountain- The Complete Geological Story, 2023), wildcat drilling in the Albuquerque Basin including Valencia County started in 1953.
Cretaceous rocks in the San Juan Basin in northwestern New Mexico were found to contain significant petroleum and oil companies started exploring other areas where Cretaceous rocks could be found.
Most wells in the Albuquerque Basin only penetrated the very thick more recent Santa Fe Group sediments, and those contained no petroleum reserves.
Three deep boreholes (1954, 1974 and 1974) in Valencia County reached Cretaceous sediments, but no petroleum was found at any of these three locations either. A second very expensive Isleta borehole was drilled in 1980 just north of the county line to 21,266 feet, and no Cretaceous was reached and no oil reserves were found.
No more oil drilling has been attempted in the Albuquerque Basin since 1997.
In 2022, Valencia County approved a controversial overlay zone that would facilitate the permitting process for an oil well.
It is likely that the location for a new well would target (deep) geologically-promising rock layers and would also be located in an area with existing infrastructure for oil storage and transportation.
New Mexico already produces a lot of oil in the northwestern and southeastern parts of the state, and there are significant scientific concerns about the impact to the climate from fossil fuels.
Therefore, it can be expected that any proposal to drill for oil in Valencia County would create significant controversy.
The attached map reports the Valencia County oil drilling locations listed by the State of New Mexico’s Oil Conservation Division; some reports list additional wells, all reported to be “dry holes” with no petroleum reserves.
(Paul Parmentier, a certified professional geologist retired from California and living in Los Lunas, shares the rich geologic features in Valencia County. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in geology from Belgium and a master’s degree in geochemistry from Japan. The Geology Landscapes of Valencia County are featured monthly.)
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May 2, 2024
