President Obama to Visit New Mexico Oil Field Jobs

Oil Field Jobs -It's always busy at Linda's Grill at lunchtime as oil field jobs from around the region fill the lone restaurant in Maljamar, a no-stoplight town of 38 in the middle of the oil-rich area.On Wednesday, some of the restaurant's eight tables were filled with a rare sight: men in suits and ties. They were from the White House and stopped for a meal before President Barack Obama's visit to New Mexico's petroleum fields outside of town later in the day.

Maljamar resident Bill Gideon, 64-year-old husband to the grill's namesake, sat there about an hour before grabbing a meal and going back to work. He owns L&B Trucking and his six trucks haul piping for drilling to oil rig jobs all over the region. The economy is OK, he said, and people have jobs, but it could be busier.Companies have moved rig operations west because "the permits weren't coming fast enough, it was slow," Gideon said.

The complaints about a slow permitting process were being echoed across the industry here as Obama was scheduled to step into solid Republican territory to visit oil fields on federal lands and tout the fact that domestic oil and gas production has increased each year he has been in office.The industry is also upset over the administration's consideration of listing the dunes sagebrush lizard as an endangered species, which it fears could curtail development.

The visit was part of a three-state swing the president is making to defend his energy agenda in the face of rising gas prices. His first stop was to a solar panel plant in Nevada, then to the oil and gas fields in New Mexico and the site of a future oil pipeline in Oklahoma.The White House said in a news release that the stop will "highlight the Administration's commitment to expanding domestic oil and gas production." Oil production is at an eight-year high and natural gas output is at an all-time high, it said.

But Steve Henke, president of the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association, said production could be even higher. And he was hoping that Obama might be announcing more funding for the Bureau of Land Management office in Carlsbad, which he says is unable to keep up with demand for the drilling permits needed to accelerate the development of federally owned oil and gas resources in the state, he said.
"We feel that if the administration wants to invest with a partner to create jobs and revenue, that they should invest in the BLM and the Carlsbad field office," 

Maljamar is about 280 miles southeast of Albuquerque near the Texas border.According to the menu at Linda's Grill, "William Mitchell, president of Maljamar Oil & Gas Company(Alberta Oil Careers), which brought the first oil well to southeastern New Mexico in 1926, reportedly named the town for his three children, Malcolm, Janet and Margaret."

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