As my friends will tell you, I spend WAY too much time looking and obsessing over how much crude oil is produced in New Mexico. Hey, we all need hobbies.

Neighbor Texas continues to dominate in terms of totals, but let’s look at oil production per capita.

Barrels produced per day per person by selected States:

• North Dakota 1.45
• New Mexico .906
• Texas .185

Most folks tend to think that Texas is run, in every sense of the word, by the “oil bidness.” But per capita, The Land of Enchantment is nearly five times more owned by and beholden to crude oil. Each of us produces, in a matter of speaking, about a barrel of oil every day. Boom or bust, we’ve pretty much always had this deal with the devil, but its extent continues to currently spike in a way that makes for a really impressive graph:

For context, back in January 2019 when Susana Martinez (Southern NM, considered very “oil field friendly”) finally left as Governor, the state was pumping out 810,000 barrels a day. In October of 2025 under Democratic Governor Lujan Grisham “we” produced nearly three times that 2019 amount. Heck, see for yourself as you stare at the same EIA month-by-month table I spend WAY too much staring at:

So what does this all mean? Who cares? These are questions my friends try really hard to avoid asking me when I invariably bring this up again, but you’ve stuck with this post this far, so I’ll reveal what it all means.

I really don’t know. Should we care? I don’t know.

We New Mexicans sure as hell don’t seem to care much about our tripling oil production. And the oil & gas revenues have filled the state coffers to the point pretty much everybody agrees we simply don’t have the infrastructural means to execute spending it all. The Governor has proposed a 4.6% increase in recurring budgetary spending in FY27 (total budget $11.33 billion) but while the State’s Legislative Finance Committee (LFC) continues to talk oil production slowdown, not the “slowed” percentage of growth in oil/gas in the following paragraph:

“Oil production is already experiencing a slowdown, even though moderate growth is expected throughout the forecast. The state produced 781 million barrels of oil in FY25, a 9.9 percent increase (humble blogposter emphasis) from total FY24 production but a significant slowdown from 30 percent growth in FY22 and 23.7 percent in FY23. The consensus estimate expects oil production will grow 2.5 percent in FY26 from FY25 levels, resulting in 820 million barrels of New Mexicoproduced oil. Growth continues throughout the forecast at a slowing pace.“

Yeah, we’re only increasing oil production (i.e. oil and gas revenues) twice as fast as we’re spending now. I’m guessing about 49 other states (including Texas) would love to have this “significant slowdown” in revenue growth.

As we head into another New Mexico Legislative Session next week, this one of the 30-Day, only what the Governor brings up, variety, I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but my guess is we’re not gonna spend nearly all the money we continue to take in during this unprecedented oil boom.

I’m reluctant to pass along what I would do with all this money if it were only up to me. It’s most accurate to say I don’t really know what I’d do, other than change some things making it far, far less likely we get anywhere near as much oil & gas revenue in the future. But who wants to buzzkill this crude oil gravy train?

I don’t know. Nobody, I guess.