Texas wants to take oil land from New Mexico. What could go wrong? | Opinion
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Texas study of annexing parts of southeast New Mexico aims to shift oil revenue control.
- Proposal sparks political clash: Texas committees vs New Mexico leaders, public officials.
- Annexation push serves oil interests by pressuring New Mexico lawmakers on regulation.
Texas wants to take over part of New Mexico.
That was the unbelievable headline last week.
It wasn’t April Fool.
Two Republican lawmakers in New Mexico started this. They’d like to move Hobbs, Portales and two whole counties into redder, more oil-friendly Texas.
In the words of Lovington Republican Rep. Randall Pettigrew: “We can get the hell out of New Mexico. ... [Democrats] want all the money.”
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Texas, of course, would love the money.
We’d gladly take $13 billion a year in oil revenue from Lea and Roosevelt counties.
We can even send an army of lobbyists and oil zillionaires to make it happen.
After all, why stop at Texas’ current 254 counties? What’s a few counties between neighbors?
Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, actually assigned a committee to consider the opportunity.
“Southeast New Mexico deserves a real voice in its own future,” Burrows said in a written statement, “not one dictated by Santa Fe.”
As you can imagine, this did not go over well in Santa Fe or Albuquerque. The oil from southeast New Mexico is considered the bedrock of the state’s economy.
New Mexico House Speaker Javier Martínez, D-Albuquerque, said in a statement: “Let me put this into terms Speaker Burrows might be able to understand: Come and try to take it.”
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s office issued a statement saying “Texas can study it all they want.”
The New Mexico Senate Democrats’ spokesman, Chris Nordstrum, mocked the whole idea.
“Nothing says ‘serious policy agenda’ like adding ‘annexing some New Mexico counties’ to your to-do list right between tax reform and water shortages,” he said.
Before Texas starts twisting arms in Santa Fe, let’s think about the complications.
First, Portales is the home of Eastern New Mexico University.
Does that become Formerly Eastern New Mexico?
And there’s a casino in Hobbs. Does it get grandfathered?
Also, there is the basic problem that absolutely everything in Texas culture would be rendered obsolete.
Diners would need new waffle irons.
Motels would have to rebuild their Texas-shaped swimming pools.
What about poor H-E-B? Who’s going to eat all those tortilla chips shaped like Texas?
Texans still like to talk about how when this was an independent country, the Republic of Texas claimed all the land in New Mexico and Colorado east of the Rio Grande.
But that was never organized. We settled that claim in 1850 for a payoff of $10 million, about $450 million today.
We ain’t getting it back.
Let me tell you what’s going on here.
Obviously, the oil interests in New Mexico’s border counties want to get their way in Santa Fe.
The more noise they make about seceding, the more pressure they put on lawmakers to ease off regulation.
For his part, Burrows is talking about how the boundary should reflect culture and “the shared values of the Permian and Delaware basins,” as if oilfields are an ethnic state.
Today, New Mexico.
Tomorrow, Greenland.
This story was originally published April 2, 2026 at 10:48 AM.
