Bush Drilling Plan Brings Foes Together | LA Times [View All]

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Bush Drilling Plan Brings Foes Together
Ranchers, hunters and environmentalists decry bid to draw natural gas from New Mexico plain.

By Julie Cart, Times Staff Writer

OTERO MESA, N.M. — The governor of New Mexico — leading an unusual alliance of ranchers, environmentalists, hunters and property-rights activists — has launched an election-year challenge to the Bush administration's energy policies, vowing to block a plan to drill for gas on a vast expanse of desert grasslands here.

Gov. Bill Richardson's opposition represents the strongest signal to date that the Rocky Mountain West, long dependent on energy production, is having second thoughts about the administration's aggressive advocacy of oil and gas drilling.

"The federal government just got notice that, if they want to drill in Otero Mesa, this governor and this state are going to fight them," Richardson said at a rally in Albuquerque last week.

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