Earlier this week, ConocoPhillips completed its acquisition of Concho Resources Inc. Holders of Concho Resources stock will receive 1.46 shares of ConocoPhillips stock. ConocoPhillips announced in October that it was buying Concho for $9.7 billion. Together, the two companies have a combined value of about $60 billion.
Both companies have had a strong presence in Eddy County and the Delaware Basin. In fact, both companies have recently added or renovated offices here. At this point, it is still too early to tell what this will mean for Carlsbad and the surrounding area. As we have stated many times, we still sit above the greatest oil and gas resource in the world. ConocoPhillips has been an excellent partner in our community, and we are confident that they will continue to invest heavily here. There’s certainly a lot of work to do in this area in the future, so we are hoping for the best.
We had a great working relationship with Concho Resources Inc. over the years. They were one of the first oil and gas companies to partner with us for our annual energy summit and provided some of our best speakers over the years. Concho also played a very important role in introducing us to many of the other energy companies in the area. Thank you to Kristin Ditto, Bernadette Granger and everyone with Concho who worked so closely with us. We know we’ll be working together in the future.
New Mexico’s legislative session also began this week, and our local delegates have already pre-filed several bills. As promised, Rep. Cathrynn Brown has filed HB 49, which would exempt Social Security payments from state income tax. Senator Gay Kernan has pre-filed two bills, one which would enable the use of a design and build system for certain Department of Transportation projects and one which would create a new pilot program to establish a transition from community colleges to state universities. Senator Ron Griggs has pre-filed a bill to amend the Local Economic Development Act to include businesses in unincorporated areas of a county.
Here’s some positive news on the COVID-19 front- over the past three days, the number of positive tests for Eddy County have gone down considerably. There were new 22 cases announced on Tuesday, and similar numbers on Monday and Sunday. This would put our “cases per 100,000” rate at less than half of what it was during the previous two weeks. Carlsbad Medical Center also reported that their positivity rate for tests on Tuesday was 11%. The positivity rate for the period ending on Jan. 13 was 27%, so we are very hopeful that things are finally moving in the right direction.
Sincerely,
Carlsbad Mayor Dale Janway